Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Judicial Council on Thursday adjourned a matter about the maintainability of a complaint against National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry.

The SJC was supposed to consider whether the reference filed by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) was maintainable before the forum in terms of Article 209 of the constitution read with section 6(b) (1) of National Accountability Ordinance 1999.

The council was also scheduled to hear the case against one of the judges of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) which prolonged for hours due to which the matter could not be taken up, sources told Daily Times.

The PTI requested the council to remove Chaudhry from the slot keeping as his impartiality was in question on the grounds of top court’s April 20 ruling over Panama Case, wherein the court had observed that the chairman appeared to be indifferent and even unwilling to perform his part.

The PTI had contended that it was one of the major reasons that a majority of the judges of the bench ruled that such response from the head of the top anti-graft body had constrained them to look elsewhere to form a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to probe the matter.

Earlier, the council also reserved its judgement on a plea of a judge of IHC, wherein he sought open trial of his case. Sources said that the SJC has been hearing the case against one of the judges of IHC over his alleged misconduct.

However, the IHC judge through his counsel moved an application challenging the procedure of hearing and asked the SJC to conduct his trial in the open court room instead of in-camera.

Upon this plea, the council had directed the attorney general to submit his reply within 10 days.

Sources claimed that the AG Office had also framed nine charges of misconduct against the judge who filed the plea. In October 2016, former chief justice Anwar Jamali while dismissing an appeal upheld the objections of the Registrar’s Office against a petition, wherein the court was requested to not only activate the proceedings of SJC but also disclose the number of pending references.

“It is one of the important aspect of proceedings before the Supreme Judicial Council that at every stage of its proceedings, within the parameter of prescribed under Rule 13 (ibid) and other enabling provisions, complete confidentiality and secrecy is to be maintained about actions taken by the Council, and Article 19-A, which itself provides for reasonable restrictions, will have no over-riding effect to it,” the former chief justice had observed on a petition filed by Raheel Kamran.