Supreme Court to take up Isa review petitions on 16th

A six-judge larger bench of the Supreme Court will take up on November 16 the review petitions filed against the apex court’s June 19 order in Justice Qazi Faez Isa case.

The larger bench is headed by Justice Umar Ata Bandial and includes Justice Manzoor Ahmed Malik, Justice Mazhar Alam Miankhel, Justice Sajjad Ali Shah, Justice Munib Akhtar and Justice Qazi Muhammad Amin Ahmed.

The bench will take up the review petitions filed by Justice Isa, his wife Sarina Isa and superior bars including the Pakistan Bar Council and the Supreme Court Bar Association.

On June 19, the 10-judge full-court quashed a presidential reference that alleged that Justice Isa had committed misconduct by not disclosing his family member’s foreign properties in his wealth statement. The reference had sought his removal.

In the split order, seven of the judges had, however, referred the case to the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and ordered the tax authority to launch an inquiry into foreign assets of Justice Isa’s family.

The short order had asked the FBR chairman to present a report on the basis of the inquiry to the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC), the constitutional forum that can hold a superior judge accountable.

The judges included in the larger bench that will hear the review petitions are those who wrote the majority judgment. However, one member of the bench, Justice Faisal Arab, has retired.

Rasheed A Rizvi, who is appearing on behalf of the Sindh Bar Council, has expressed serious concern for not including Justice Maqbool Baqar, Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and Justice Yahya Afridi in the bench. These three judges were also part of the 10-judge bench but wrote dissenting notes.

He said the Supreme Court Rules 1980 says the same bench hears review petitions. Rizvi stated the petitioners are moving applications requesting the court to include the three judges in the bench.

Senior lawyers also referred to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto case in which three judges had dissented and did not endorse the death sentence awarded by the seven other judges.

When a review was filed by Bhutto, these minority judges were made part of the larger bench. Later, even they joined the majority judges and unanimously endorsed Bhutto’s death sentence. According to sources, Justice Isa is doing chamber work and he is not hearing cases in the ongoing week.