ISLAMABAD, May 15: The Supreme Court on Tuesday maintained the order of one of its benches under which the proceedings of the Supreme Judicial Council against Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry was stayed until the CJ’s petition — challenging the filing of the reference against him, composition of the SJC and its competence to look into the matter — was decided by a 13-member bench.

“The interim arrangement ordered by a five-member larger bench on May 7 shall continue till further orders,” ordered Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday.

Justice Ramday was heading a 13-member bench which has taken up a set of 23 identical petitions on the chief justice issue.

Attorney-General Makdoom Ali Khan also had no objection over maintaining the status quo and asked the apex court to let the present hearing before the larger bench be concluded first because there was no point in holding two separate proceedings.

On the insistence of Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan, the counsel of the chief justice, Sharifuddin Pirzada, representing the referring authority (President Gen Pervez Musharraf) informed the court about government’s objections on three counts over maintainability of the chief justice’s petition.

One of the objections was that the petition had been filed prematurely, since the SJC had not yet submitted its report to President Musharraf, who also had not taken any action.

Likewise, Mr Pirzada said, the petition was also not maintainable because it contravened the provisions enshrined in Article 210 (Council enjoys the same power like that of the Supreme Court), Article 211 (SJC proceedings cannot be called in question in any court) and Article 248 (protection provided to the president, governor, ministers etc).

He, however, preferred not to elaborate objections, saying he would commence his arguments from tomorrow, although there still left an hour before the court time was over.

Representing the federal government, Malik Qayyum also said he would question whether the petition fulfilled the criteria to be filed under the fundamental rights.

Earlier, before opening his arguments, Mr Ahsan spurned the apprehensions expressed in the reply by the respondents (president and the federal government) and assured the court that the chief justice did not want to politicise, scandalise or sensationalise the hearing.

Referring to the events of March 9 when the chief justice was called by the president at his Rawalpindi Camp Office as endorsed by a press release issued later, he said the petitioner was shown a rough and incomplete draft copy of the reference containing allegations against him.

After seeing the reference, he recalled, the petitioner told the president that the allegations were spurious as had been mentioned in a letter by a lawyer and already published.

The counsel also quoted an interview by Kamran Khan on a private television channel in which president had admitted that the chief justice had been called and suggested to tender his resignation.

The chief justice was asked to go through the documents when the president and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz left after some time. After 2pm, the chief justice was detained in the camp office till 5pm and was prevented from leaving the president’s office when the petitioner wanted to. During all this time, the petitioner was persuaded to resign, the counsel said.

The same day, he said, Justice Javed Iqbal was sworn in as the acting chief justice, adding it would have been appropriate for Justice Iqbal to ascertain first whether the chief justice had left the country or had been disabled due to some accident. The same day, the meeting of the SJC was convened and two of its members were brought to Islamabad from Karachi and Lahore, the counsel said.

Mr Ahsan said the SJC endorsed the restraining order earlier issued by the law ministry without realising the fact that it had no authority to make a final order and deplored that the instant reference was filed and taken on the same day when already 42 references were pending before the SJC for adjudication for quite some time.