Lawyers see a ‘conscious’ SC approach

Apex court judges also urged the CJP to constitute the full court to hear the matter

ISLAMABAD:

The Supreme Court has dampened the hopes of the opposition and the bars, which were expecting coercive order against the National Assembly speaker’s ruling that rejected the no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Imran Khan on the basis of Article 5 of the Constitution.

Several SC judges met Chief Justice of Pakistan Umar Ata Bandial at his residence on Sunday to share their concern about the constitutional situation. It is also learnt that apex court judges also urged the chief justice to constitute the full court to hear this matter.

However, chief justice Bandial preferred to include Justice Ijazul Ahsan, who acted as monitoring judge in Panamagate case. Justice Ahsan is part of several special and larger benches which heard constitutional matters for last five years. Likewise, Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar, who is 15th on the judges’ seniority list, is also part of the bench.

Senior lawyers believe that the perception regarding the division among the Supreme Court judges had not ended. Keeping in view of this perception, they say that chief justice Bandial should form a larger bench wherein no one could raise allegation of favouritism.

They state that this move has made Article 95 of the Constitution “redundant”. A lawyer said that the constitution of bench in this matter indicated that the Supreme Court had adopted very “conscious approach”.

He, however, expected that the chief justice, while heading the larger bench, would consider all these aspects in this matter.

Read: Opposition demands full SC bench to hear ‘constitutional crisis’ plea

On the other hand, one section of opposition is happy over the prevailing political situation that Prime Minister Imran Khan ceased to hold the office on Sunday.

It is learnt that JUI-F is also happy over prevailing situation as their aim was to oust Imran Khan from the post of the prime minister. The PML-N is already divided on the early election. One section led by Nawaz Sharif was already demanding early elections.

In view of the prevailing situation, two deputy attorney generals resigned from their post. A member of the PTI legal team revealed that Attorney General for Pakistan Khalid Jawed Khan is one of the architects of this plan. However, AGP denied this fact.

Bar representatives however are saying that if the AGP is not the architect of this move then he should resign from his post.