Suo motu notice: New CJP orders inquiry into footage controversy

Supreme Court registrar to head the investigation.

ISLAMABAD:

After assuming charge as the top judge on Thursday, Justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani took suo motu notice of the Supreme Court administration allowing only one private TV channel to exclusively cover the full-court reference in honour of outgoing chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

This notice comes a day after he had questioned the suo motu jurisdiction in his speech at the full court reference.

Nevertheless, after he took oath, he also took his first suo motu notice. And the matter is a controversial one as the former chief justice as well as the court administration have been criticised heavily for favouring one media group. The secretary of former chief justice Chaudhry had explained that the services of a private cameraman were acquired and he was asked to provide the footage to all TV channels, but he provided footage to one specific channel only.

On the orders of CJ Jillani, the additional registrar of the apex court will be heading the inquiry. “Chief Justice Justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani took notice on a note of registrar containing the details that it is widely reported in the electronic and print media that a certain media group was given access inside the courtroom number one to have an exclusive footage of the proceedings…” the note of registrar reads.



“It is alleged that the Supreme Court administration had been discriminatory in its treatment of journalists by favouring one media group against others. The report portrays a somewhat negative perspective of the Supreme Court even though it strictly follows the policy of absolute neutrality and impartiality,” it adds.

The note recommends that “Chief Justice of Pakistan may like to order a detailed inquiry into the alleged incident through a senior officer of the court so as to determine the authenticity or otherwise of the allegation and take action against the delinquent(s), if found guilty.”

Allegation or discrimination?

Senior lawyers in Peshawar termed the footage of the full court reference of former Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry as mismanagement of the Supreme Court and said that all channels should have been allowed if the administration wanted to get the event covered.

Peshawar High Court Bar Association President Ishtiaq Ibrahim said the court administration did not handle the management of the full court reference properly.

Supreme Court Bar Association Member Noor Alam Khan said all news channels should have been allowed if the reference was to be covered, and not only that one channel.

Moreover, the channel that eventually covered it should not have taken credit for it, he added. “Cameras are usually not allowed in the courtroom and even mobile phones are jammed during that time.”

Advocate Hamid Khan, who is Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s (PTI) senior vice president, said the incident may have had some official sanction. “While what happened was unethical, there should have been less hype about it,” he told The Express Tribune. However, he added that it was not routine to record proceedings of full court references.

Sindh High Court Bar Association’s president Z K Jatoi said the Supreme Court Registrar Office is already investigating the matter of video footage’s leakage and “we should wait for the results.”

In Karachi, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan chairperson Zohra Yusuf said that “every media group wants a scoop but is not sure about what methods the media group took to obtain the footage, since the Supreme Court said that they didn’t give it to anyone.”


Published in The Express Tribune, December 13^th, 2013.