ISLAMABAD, May 11: Former Speaker of the National Assembly, Fakhar Imam, and his wife Syeda Abida Hussain moved the Supreme Court jointly on Friday to challenge the suspension and filing of a reference against Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

The reference filed by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf on the recommendation of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz was mala fide and based on ill intention, the petition said and prayed before the court to restore the Chief Justice of Pakistan by declaring the reference void.

A 14-member full court will take up identical petitions against the CJP’s suspension starting next Monday.

The president, prime minister, secretary law and Supreme Judicial Council have been named respondents in the petition.

It said the CJP was discharging his constitutional and legal duties honestly, vigorously and in a straight forward manner. He had opened the Human Rights Cell to alleviate the sufferings of the common man but was restrained from performing his constitutional duties in a very unconstitutional and illegal manner.

The petitioners said that they were not challenging the contents of the reference but the mode and procedure adopted for filing the reference, adding that the restraining of the CJP from performing his constitutional duties was without any constitutional and legal justification.