The coalition government on Friday asked Supreme Court\u2019s Justice Ijazul Ahsan and Justice Sayyed Mazahar Ali Akbar Naqvi to \u201crecuse themselves\u201d from a larger Supreme Court bench that is hearing suo motu proceedings regarding the delay in the announcement of a date for elections in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
\nThe request was presented in a joint statement by the PPP, PML-N and JUI-F.
\nA nine-member bench, headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Umar Ata Bandial and also comprising Justice Ahsan, Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, Justice Munib Akhtar, Justice Yahya Afridi, Justice Naqvi, Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail, Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar and Justice Athar Minallah, is hearing the case.
\nThe suo motu notice was taken by the top judge after President Dr Arif Alvi earlier this week unilaterally announced April 9 as the election date in both provinces after his invitation for consultations on the matter was turned down by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).
\nIn the previous hearing, the apex court had issued notices to all the stakeholders and asked them to come up with \u201cskeleton arguments\u201d.
\nAttorney General for Pakistan (AGP) Shehzad Ata Elahi, Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), government through the cabinet secretary, chief secretaries of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Pakistan Bar Council (PBC), the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), all the advocate generals of the provinces, and the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) were also issued notices.
\nDuring the proceedings, a divide was also visible in the larger SC bench as Justice Mandokhail objected to the suo motu notice and termed it \u201cnot justified\u201d, while Justice Shah and Justice Minallah raised queries regarding the motive behind the dissolutions of assemblies.
\nAhead of today\u2019s hearing, Barrister Ali Zafar, JUI\u2019s counsel Kamran Murtaza and PPP\u2019s lawyer Farooq H Naik appeared in court.
\nLikewise, PML-N\u2019s lawyer Mansoor Awan, and the Punjab governor\u2019s counsel Mustafa Ramde were also in attendance.
\nAttorney General Shahzad Atta Elahi and Additional Attorney General Aamir Rehman as well as other legal fraternity representatives and political leaders are also attending the hearing.
\nThe hearing
\nAs the proceedings commenced, PML-N\u2019s counsel pointed out that he had not yet received a copy of the court order.
\nPPP\u2019s lawyer Farooq H. Naek said reiterated the same and urged the court to issue notices to all parties concerned.
\n\u201cToday, we will mark everyone here present and hear everyone on Monday,\u201d the CJP said here, noting that the representatives of all provinces were present in the courtroom.
\nAt that, the PPP counsel said: \u201cWith great respect, I am objecting to the inclusion of two judges in the bench. The [party] leaders have decided to object to [their inclusion].\u201d
\nNaek then went on to name Justice Mazahar Ali Naqvi and Justice Ejazul Ahsan, stating that he had an objection to the inclusion of the two judges in the bench.
\nHe also read out a joint statement of the PPP, the JUI-F and the PML-N.
\n\u201cAfter Justice Jamal Mandokhail\u2019s note, Justice Ahsan and Justice Naqvi must recuse themselves from the bench,\u201d he urged the court, adding that both the judges should not hear any case involving the PML-N and JUI-F.
\n\u201cAll three political parties respectfully request that the two-member bench\u2019s order of suo motu notice is available. Hence, both judges should not sit on the bench in the context of the provision of justice and fair trial,\u201d Naek told the court.
\nHere, Justice Athar Minallah opined that the matter, in his view, pertained to Article 184(3) of the Constitution \u2014 a provision that empowers the top court to intervene in matters involved in the enforcement of fundamental rights \u2014 and asked why it should not be heard in a full court.
\nNaek replied that he did not want to go into the details, adding that he also believed that the case should be heard by a full-court bench.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The coalition government on Friday asked Supreme Court\u2019s Justice Ijazul Ahsan and Justice Sayyed Mazahar Ali Akbar Naqvi to \u201crecuse themselves\u201d from a larger Supreme…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4997,"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-4996","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\/4996","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=4996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}