Attorney-General for Pakistan (AGP) Ashtar Ausaf Ali has resigned from his post.
\nSources said that the AGP has submitted his resignation to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, however, he has been asked to continue working till a replacement is appointed.
\nThe sources said that AGP Ali has resigned due to health reasons.
\nJCP meeting to be held today
\nInterestingly, the news of the AGP\u2019s resignation came a few minutes before the Judicial Commission of Pakistan, of which he is a member, was scheduled to meet on the appointment of judges.
\nThe JCP, which is meeting after a gap of five months, is expected to take up the permanent appointment of 13 Lahore High Court judges.
\nControversy surrounding last JCP meeting
\nAGP Ali was at the centre of the controversy surrounding the last JCP meeting.
\nThe last JCP meeting, held in July last year, it was reported based on sources that the commission had rejected CJP Bandial’s nominated judges of higher courts for their elevation to the SC.
\nCJP Bandial had presided over the judicial commission’s session, where a total of five judges, two from the Sindh High Court and three from the Lahore High Court (LHC), were considered.
\nHowever, the official statement issued by the Supreme Court stated that the JCP chairman, after detailed discussion, proposed to \u201cdefer the meeting in order to enable the Hon\u2019ble Chief Justice of Pakistan to place additional information and data about those already proposed and if he considers appropriate, add more names to the list of proposees for consideration by the JCP\u201d.
\n\u201cThe proposal to defer the meeting was supported by Mr Justice Ijaz-ul-Ahsan, Mr Justice Sajjad Ali Shah, Mr Justice (Retd) Sarmad Jalal Osmany and the Attorney General for Pakistan. It was accordingly decided to defer the meeting. The date of the next meeting will be communicated to the Members of the Judicial Commission by the Chairman, JCP,\u201d the statement had said.
\nHowever after the statement was made public, two members of the JCP\u2014 Justice Isa and Justice Sardar Tariq Masood \u2014 stated that the statement was not reflective of what had transpired in the JCP meeting.
\nFollowing criticism, the apex court uploaded the audio of the JCP meeting on its website.
\n\u201cIn these exceptional circumstances the Hon\u2019ble chairman JCP has been pleased to relax the restriction under Rule 5(4) of the JCP Rules, 2010 and has directed for the audio recording of the JCP proceedings of 28.07.2022 to be made available on the official website of the SCP,\u201d said a statement issued by the apex court.
\nThe Supreme Court, in its statement, claimed that the \u201caudio recording from time slot 1:29:45 to 1:38:08 contains the statement\u201d made by Attorney-General for Pakistan Ashtar Ausaf Ali, led to the deferment of the meeting as claimed by the PRO.
\nThe statement also claimed that the AGP \u201cdid not assess or reject the merits of any of the High Court judges proposed for appointment to the SCP\u201d.
\n\u201cAs a result, 5 members of the JCP supported the deferment of the meeting as reported in the Press Note of 28.07.2022,\u201d said the SCP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Attorney-General for Pakistan (AGP) Ashtar Ausaf Ali has resigned from his post. Sources said that the AGP has submitted his resignation to Prime Minister Shehbaz…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1699,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news-updates"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}