LAHORE, April 16: The Pakistan Lawyers Forum on Monday challenged before the Supreme Court the verdict of the Lahore High Court on an appeal against the Legal Framework Order (LFO).

A division bench of the Lahore High Court had on April 10 dismissed the intra-court appeal of the PLF for lack of its jurisdiction to review the LFO. The bench observed that parliament, being the supreme legislative body, should decide the fate of the LFO.

Forum’s president Advocate A.K. Dogar pleaded in the petition that the members of the division bench had failed in exercising their jurisdiction with regard to his submissions against the LFO.

He claimed that even after being validated by parliament, the LFO would remain an extra-constitutional package and could still be struck down on the principles laid down in the Holy Quran and Sunnat, besides the 1973 Constitution.

He said that the courts had the power to adjudge every legislative measure of the chief executive on the basis of state necessity.

According to the PLF president, the SC had clearly ruled in the Zafar Ali Shah case that the 1973 Constitution was supreme and its basic features could not be altered even by parliament.

Mr Dogar said that the chief executive could not be ‘self-appointed’ through a method other than elections under Article 41 (3) of the Constitution.

He pleaded that the three-year extension in the superannuation age of the superior courts’ judges through the LFO amounted to making them judges in their own cause.

He also claimed that the division bench had drastically cut short the proceedings following a sudden change of its mind which indicated its bias.