Govt threatens to boycott court proceedings if full bench not formed

Only the formation of a larger bench could resolve the controversy in the current scenario, says interior minister

Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah on Monday said that all parties in the government coalition have unanimously decided to boycott court proceedings if their demand to form a full court bench is not met in the case related to the recently held Punjab chief minister’s election.

"All the political parties have requested the honourable Supreme Court to constitute a full court bench on the issue of the election of the Punjab chief minister... it will increase the respect of the court," he said while speaking to the media outside the apex court alongside Minister for Law and Justice Azam Nazir Tarar.

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The minister said that the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had de-seated 25 PTI members for disobeying the instructions of party head Imran Khan.

"Only the formation of a larger bench could resolve the controversy in the current scenario," he added.

Sanaullah said all political parties and the entire nation have complete confidence in the full court and even the Supreme Court Bar Association has filed a review petition for becoming a party to the presidential reference case regarding interpretation of Article 63 of the Constitution which had been admitted for hearing.

Read: Ruling coalition seething over SC ruling on Hamza's 'trustee CM' status

"We plead that the apex court may take up the identical petitions for hearing in the full bench," he added.

Speaking on the occasion, Azam Nazir Tarar said that presidents of Supreme Court Bar Association were also present during today’s proceedings, saying that they had also said that forming the full court bench will increase the respect for the top court.

Tarar said that when former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was sentenced, a petition was filed against the decision, however, the full court bench in 2015 had said that it was the right of the party chief.

He said that only the head of a political party was the authority to declare the party policy in accordance with the previous judgements of the apex court.

Tarar said that all the ambiguity in the matter would be removed with the constitution of a full SC bench.

The minister said that it had been stated that a party’s chief was a strong voice of the concerned political party who decides party tickets, voting in the house and even he could suspend the party membership of anyone.

He said that they would only accept the judgement of the full court bench on the matter.

Earlier in the day, the bench reserved its judgment on the formation of a full bench while hearing a petition by Punjab Assembly Speaker Chaudhry Pervez Elahi against the reelection of Hamza Shehbaz as the chief minister of Punjab. Elahi was also the candidate for the chief minister’s slot.

Elahi secured 186 votes against 179 votes of PML-N's Hamza Shehbaz. However, Deputy Speaker Sardar Dost Muhammad Mazari rejected 10 votes of the PML-Q lawmakers on the basis of a letter from party chief Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, who said that his party did not support Elahi.

In a joint conference earlier in the day, PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz, Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman along with other leaders of the ruling coalition demanded a full bench to preside over Elahi’s petition against the election of Punjab chief minister.

The allied parties hardened their stance against what Maryam Nawaz has termed as “bench-fixing” – expressing strong reservations over the bench composition in the crucial constitutional case.

“Our justice system is such that when a petition is filed, people already know what bench will be constituted and the decision that will be given,” Maryam had said.