The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously accepted a review petition against its 2022 verdict related to the defection clause under Article 63-A of the Constitution. Through its May 17, 2022 verdict, the SC had declared that votes cast contrary to the parliamentary party lines under Article 63-A should not be counted. Article 63-A aims to restrict the voting powers of lawmakers by making them bound to the decision of the \u201cParty Head\u201d \u2014 whoever is formally declared the head of the party. The penalty for violating Article 63-A is disqualification from the National Assembly and the vacation of the defecting lawmaker\u2019s seat, the Constitution states. Today\u2019s verdict comes amid attempts by the ruling coalition to garner the required support to make a set of amendments to the Constitution, multiple of which pertain to the judiciary. The 2022 response to the presidential reference filed by then-president Arif Alvi was a 3-2 split decision, with then-chief justice Umar Ata Bandial, Justice Ijazul Ahsan and Justice Munib Akhtar being the majority verdict authors. A five-member bench \u2014 headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Qazi Faez Isa and also including Justices Naeem Akhtar Afghan, Aminuddin Khan, Jamal Khan Mandokhail, and Mazhar Alam Khan Miankhel \u2014 resumed hearing today the review plea filed by the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) in June 2022. Justice Afghan had been included after Justice Munib Akhtar \u2014 part of the bench that originally heard the case \u2014 and senior puisne judge Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah successively chose not to sit on the larger bench. In a previous hearing, CJP Isa had poked holes in the opinion rendered by the previous larger bench. On Wednesday, the court dismissed objections raised by Zafar, Imran\u2019s counsel, on the bench\u2019s constitution in light of a recent amendment ordinance. During today\u2019s hearing, Zafar said he did not wish to be part of the case if his client was not being allowed to appear via video link. However, CJP Isa then asked him to assist the court, which he agreed to. At the outset of the hearing, CJP Isa inquired Zafar if he was able to meet Imran as per the court\u2019s directives, to which the lawyer replied in the affirmative. \u201cYes, I met him yesterday but it was not in private. There were jail authorities present during the meeting,\u201d Zafar lamented. He stated that Imran wanted to speak before the court himself and present his arguments via video link. \u201cOkay, let\u2019s move forward. You may present your arguments,\u201d the chief justice said, addressing Zafar, who replied that Imran be allowed to put forward his contentions first. \u201cAli Zafar sahib, you are a senior lawyer and a senator as well. You know how court proceedings work,\u201d Justice Isa noted. The PTI senator then stated that Imran had objections on the bench. \u201cIf the permission for the PTI founder to appear via video link is not granted, then he has told me to state a few things before the court,\u201d Zafar said. The lawyer insisted that he has to work according to the directions of his client, at which the top judge remarked, \u201cYou are not only your client\u2019s counsel but also an officer of the court.\u201d Justice Mandokhail also recalled: \u201cWe have also been lawyers [but] we did not listen to every directive of our client. We only followed what was as per the law.\u201d Here, CJP Isa observed that five minutes had been \u201cwasted\u201d over the issue, at which Zafar said he would be done with his argument and out of the courtroom in seven minutes. \u201cVery good, we also want the same,\u201d the CJP quipped. Zafar then pointed out that the government wanted to bring some amendments, referring to the proposed constitutional package for which the ruling coalition is trying to garner the required support after a failed first attempt to introduce its draft in the parliament. \u201cIf you have to talk about this, then start from the beginning,\u201d Justice Mandokhail said. \u201cYou are not letting me say what I want to,\u201d the lawyer replied, at which CJP Isa remarked that Zafar was speaking about politics \u201cso that there could be headlines tomorrow\u201d about it. Continuing with his arguments, Zafar said the proposed amendments had given an \u201cimpression that horse-trading was being allowed\u201d, reiterating Imran\u2019s earlier statements. At this, the top judge said the court could initiate contempt of court proceedings against Zafar for saying so. \u201cWe respect you, you should respect us as well. By claiming horse-trading, you are making a huge statement,\u201d CJP Isa stressed. \u201cWhat is horse-trading? You would be embarrassed if we told you,\u201d he added. Imran\u2019s counsel argued that the court\u2019s ruling on Article 63-A \u201cprevented horse-trading\u201d, at which Justice Mandokhail clarified that the apex court had \u201cgiven an opinion, not a judgment\u201d. Zafar then announced boycotting the proceedings: \u201cPTI founder has said the constitution of the bench is not right. [Therefore,] we will not be part of this case.\u201d He went on to say that if the CJP was part of the bench deciding on the review petition, it would be a \u201cconflict of interest\u201d. \u201cWhatever you are saying, we will neither listen to it nor make it part of the case record,\u201d Justice Isa observed. He then asked Zafar if he had any objection if the court appointed him as an amicus curiae, to which the lawyer replied he had no issues. Subsequently, Zafar was told to assist the court as an amicus curiae, rather than contesting the case as Imran\u2019s lawyer. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously accepted a review petition against its 2022 verdict related to the defection clause under Article 63-A of the Constitution….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20004,"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-20003","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\/20003","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=20003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}