LAHORE, June 2: The Supreme Court on Monday directed the Punjab Advocate-General to render assistance regarding the exact derogatory remarks allegedly passed by advocate M.D. Tahir which resulted in his conviction last month on contempt charges by the chief justice of the Lahore High Court.
Justices Munir A. Sheikh, Javed Iqbal and Faqir Muhammad Khokhar issued these directions while taking up the petition of M.D. Tahir against the award of six-month imprisonment and Rs50,000 fine on contempt charges. The sentence has already been suspended by the SC till the decision of this petition.
The court pointed it out to the additional advocate-general that CJ’s orders did not mention those remarks on the basis of which the petitioner was convicted.
“The CJ has just mentioned that he awarded the punishment under Article 204 of the 1973 Constitution, but he did not incorporate the alleged derogatory remarks in his orders,” the court ruled, and added that it would like to be updated in this regard.
The court has already raised a legal proposition as to whether there was a valid prevalent law in the country governing the procedure for conviction on the contempt of court charges.
On the last hearing, the court had also questioned the status of Contempt of Court Act 1976 and the scope of Article 204 of the 1973 Constitution under which an imprisonment of six months can be given on contempt of court charges.
The state has yet to apprise the court of any latest legislation in this regard.
The state has been arguing that the current petition was not maintainable since only a division bench of the LHC could hear the contempt petition under the provision of Contempt of Court Act 1976.
According to the AAG, the petitioner had withdrawn his petition from the LHC and filed it before the SC which did not have the jurisdiction to decide it under the 1976 Act. He had contended that the 1976 Act was the only valid law governing the conviction on contempt charges since Contempt of Court Ordinance 1998, which had repealed the 1976 Act, had ceased to exist as a law since it was not presented before parliament for validation within four months after its promulgation as required by the 1973 Constitution.
The petitioner had pleaded that the petition was maintainable in the SC since the conviction had been awarded under the provisions of the 1973 Constitution which was supreme to any other special law. The conviction was liable to be set aside since Article 204 did not prescribe any legal procedure to be adopted by a court while convicting a person on contempt charges and it gave only the powers for such conviction.