SC axe hangs on bill clipping CJ powers

Chief Justice of Pakistan Umar Ata Bandial has formed an eight-judge larger bench to hear petitions filed against the Supreme Court (Practice and Procedure) Bill, 2023, which curtailed the top judge’s powers to initiate suo motu proceedings and constitute benches on his own.

Besides the chief justice himself, the larger bench comprises Justice Ijazul Ahsan, Justice Muneeb Akhtar, Justice Mazahar Ali Akbar Naqvi, Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar, Justice Ayesha Malik, Justice Hasan Azhar Rizvi and Justice Shahid Waheed.

The bench will hear the petitions at 11:30 am on Thursday [today].

Interestingly, none of the judges, who had written dissenting notes in recent cases, including Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail, Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, Justice Yahya Afridi and Justice Athar Minallah, were included in the bench.

Three petitions have been filed in the top court against the bill so far. Two of them were filed by citizens Chaudhry Ghulam Hussain and Raja Aamir Khan through their lawyers Advocate Tariq Rahim and Azhar Siddique.

In the petitions, the federation, law ministry, principal secretary to the PM and principal secretary to President Dr Arif Alvi have been named as respondents.

The petitions argue that the proposed bill was based on “bad faith” and was “fraudulent” with the Constitution. They request the SC to nullify the proposed bill as “unconstitutional” and “illegal”.

The court has also been asked to suspend the proposed law until a decision on the petition was made and to prevent the president from signing the bill.

The proposed bill introduced by the government was sent to the president for approval on April 11. According to the law, President Alvi can keep the bill pending for 10 days, after which it will automatically become a law.

A joint sitting of parliament passed the bill with amendments days after the president returned the bill amid protest by the PTI senators. On Wednesday, a writ petition was also filed in the Lahore High Court challenging Section 4 of the proposed bill.

The petition requested the court to declare the bill ultra vires of the Constitution. The petitioner prayed that the court should suspend the operation of the aforementioned “impugned section” till the disposal of the plea. Petitioner Mushkoor Hussain filed the plea through Advocate Nadeem Sarwar.

“Article 184 of the Constitution deals with the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court,” the petition read. It added that under Article 184-3, the top court enjoyed original jurisdiction in matters of public importance brought before it for the enforcement of fundamental rights.

The petition highlighted that the article did not provide a right to appeal against any order passed under Article 184, while Article 185 dealt with the appellate jurisdiction of the SC.

It further read that Section 4 of the bill was repugnant to Articles 184 and 185 of the Constitution. It maintained that as both the articles provided that no appeal could be made against an order passed under Article 184.

It added that the only method to provide the right to appeal against such an order was to incorporate that through amendments to Articles 184 and 185.

WITH ADDITIONAL INPUT FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT IN LAHORE