The Constitutional Bank of the Supreme Court issued notices on Monday to the President of the Superior Court of Islamabad (IHC) and two other judges, since it assumed a plea challenging its recent transfer to the IHC and the changes related in the Antiquity list of the Court.
A five -member bank, headed by Judge Muhammad Ali Mazhar and includes Judges Naeem Akhtar Afghan, Shahid Bilal Hassan, Salahuddin Panhwar and Shakeel Ahmed, heard multiple requests presented by five IHC judges and others sitting.
The Ministry of Law of February 1 issued a notification for the transfer of Judge Sardar Muhammad Sarfraz Dogar, Judge Khadim Hussain Soomro and Judge Muhammad Asif, respectively of the Superior Court of Lahore, the Superior Court of Sindh and the Superior Court of Baluchistan at IHC.
After this transfer, the IHC issued a new list of seniority, classifying Justice to tell as a senior judge of Puisne. Five IHC judges: Judge Mohsin Akhtar Kayani, Judge Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri, Judge Sardar Ejaz Ishaq Khan, Judge Babar Sattar and Judge Saman Rafat Imtiaz, then presented representations against the Justice to do.
However, the then president of the Supreme Court of IHC, Aamer Farooq, rejected these representations. After the elevation of Judge Farooq to the Supreme Court, Judge Dugar was also elevated as the president of the IHC Supreme Court.
The judges of IHC, the founder of PTI, Imran Khan, four different lawyers associations and a Muscat Riaz Khan roja challenged Judge Aamer Faooq in the Supreme Court.
During today’s hearing, Pakistan Attorney General Mansoor Usman Awan represented the government. Other legal representatives included Idrees Ashraf (on behalf of former Prime Minister Imran Khan and Raja Muqsit), former Attorney General Munir A. Malik and lawyer Salahuddin Ahmed, who represents the judges of IHC.
The Superior Court issued notices to the three transferred judges, Justice Dogar, Justice Soomro and Justice Asif, as well as the Attorney General. However, the Bank rejected the request of the petitioners to restrict the judges transferred to continue their judicial duties.
The audience was postponed until April 17.
The pleas
The requests seek to declare the transfer of judges to the IHC as unconstitutional and request that the judges transferred to the IHC be restricted to carry out a judicial work until a final decision is made on the constitutional requests.
They also argue that the transferred judges did not oath as judges of IHC, and added that once the transferred judges lend their oath as judges of the IHC, their age should be determined from the date on which the oath was administered.
