ISLAMABAD: A chan­­ge in rules by the Sup­reme Court led to Justice Ayesha A. Malik’s dissenting opinion in the reserved seats case not being made public — by uploading the same to the court’s website — until May 9.

The apex court has made the changes with an aim to reducing the perception of deepening divide among the judges, according to sources.

“Under the new rules, any dissenting notes or additional opinion will not be uploaded to the official website of the Supreme Court unless approved by the senior judge presiding the particular bench,” confided the source privy to the development.

The policy has been devised keeping in view the instances in the past when dissenting notes were issued in the midst of proceedings, which left indelible marks of a divided court, he pointed out.

Earlier, whenever a judge wanted to withdraw himself from the bench, he issued a dissenting note even when the case had just begun.

This created the perception of a widening dissension among the judges whereas his or her dissenting views were made public by uploading the same by the IT division, thus prejudicing the case from the beginning.

This happened many times when Justice Umar Ata Bandial was chief justice of Pakistan as dissenting notes of judges were uploaded to the website and since the judges had exposed their minds, the bench tended to be reduced generating a controversy as to which was the majority judgement and which the minority.

This happened on May 6 when Justice Ayesha A. Malik and Justice Aqeel Ahmed Abbasi rejected the review petitions filed by the PML-N, Election Commission of Pakistan and PPP outright indicating they would later provide separate reasoning for their stance.

On May 9, Justice Malik wrote a complaint inviting CJP Yahya Afridi’s attention towards not uploading her dissenting order along with that of Justice Abbasi on the court’s website in the reserved seat case.

Soon after the rejection of review petitions by the two judges, the strength of the 13-judge constitutional bench was reduced to 11.

Justice Malik had regretted that she had released her order on May 8 at 3:11pm after which the IT department was required to upload the same.

However, despite being repeatedly told to do so the IT department did not upload it until Friday morning.

Published in Dawn, May 13th, 2025