Islamabad: The Superior Court of Islamabad (IHC) has included Judge Sardar Mohammad Sarfraz to tell his list of nominees for vacant positions of the Supreme Court.
Initially, the IHC had forwarded the names of three judges, the president of the Supreme Court Aamer Faooq, Judge Mohsin Akhtar Kayani and Judge Miangul Hassan Aurengzeb, to the Judicial Commission of Pakistan (JCP) for consideration. However, the Administration has now reviewed the list to include Justice to tell.
The JCP will meet today (Monday) to finish the appointments for eight vacancies of the Supreme Court. Earlier this month, the Commission requested nominations of all higher courts, requesting a list of five senior judges of each.
The IHC initially nominated only three judges because the other two senior judges, Judge Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri and Judge Babar Sattar did not meet the minimum requirement of five years of service.
JCP will meet today to finish the appointment of eight judges to the Superior Court
However, Judge Dragar, together with two judges of the Sindh Superior Court and the Superior Court of Baluchistan, was recently transferred to the IHC. After its transfer, the IHC administration reviewed its seniority list and appointed it as the senior judge of Puisne. Finally, his name has also been sent to the JCP.
Days before the name of Judge Dogar, five IHC judges approached the president of the Supreme Court of Pakistan Yahya Afridi and IHC President of the Supreme Court Aamer Faooq to claim his antiquity.
The judges argued that any transferred judge must make a new oath under article 194 of the Constitution, which would place them at the bottom of the IHC seniority list.
This would make them inelegable for the immediate consideration for the position of President of the Supreme Court of IHC, which contradict the appointment rules of the Judicial Commission of Pakistan (JCP) 2024, which stipulate that the President of the Superior Court must be selected from its three most important judges.
According to the representation presented by the judges, a judge makes an oath for the Superior Court in which they are appointed. In addition, he emphasized that according to the constitutional intention, a judge must make a new oath when transferred to another superior court.
According to this principle, the antiquity of a judge transferred to another superior court must be determined from the date of its new oath.
The judges clarified that their representation was strictly concerned about the problem of seniority and was not related to the transfer of judges.
Coincidentally, four judges of the Supreme Court also raised similar concerns and also seek the postponement of the JCP session to a decision on requests against the 26th amendment.
“In the alternative, the JCP must wait until the Constitutional Bank of the Supreme Court decides the requests that seek a complete judicial hearing to determine the challenges or issue of the transfer of the judges to the Superior Court of Islamabad (IHC) and its Antiquity is determined on the judicial side, “the judges wrote to CJP Afridi.
In a three -page letter, the senior judge of Puisne, Judge Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, Judge Munib Akhtar, Judge Ayesha A. Malik and Judge Athar Minallah declared that the induction of judges who were beneficiaries of the 26th amendment would weigh in Great measure The public trust enjoyed by the institution and unnecessarily makes things more complicated.
Referring to the recent transfer of judges to the IHC of different courts of article 200, the Charter declared that the transfer could not be permanent or open; Rather, it must be temporary and limited.
The judges transferred under article 200 (1) must take an oath in the Superior Court transferred, according to the Chart His age in the Superior Court of origin.
“How can this be? How can a judge who could and could not have been eligible for such consideration in his own superior court, suddenly and consequently the alchemy of a constitutionally suspicious facie cousin and the defective transfer becomes eligible to be considered for the Supreme Court? ? What cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly, ”said the letter.
“Obviously, the list of candidates, if we can say it, for the consideration at the meeting seems to be constitutionally defective and as much, including a judge who should not be there and exclude one that should be (that is, the fifth senior judge of the IHC ).
Posted in Dawn, February 10, 2025
