Newly appointed Attorney General of Pakistan Khalid Javed Khan on Monday recused himself from representing the government in Justice Qazi Faez Isa case, a private TV channel reported.
“The government has recommended the name of Additional Attorney General Aamir Rehman to represent it in the Supreme Court,” he said. “I cannot represent the federation as I have already stated my opinion regarding the Justice Isa reference,” he explained.
Javed asked the apex court to accept the government’s application for Additional Attorney General Amir Rehman to argue the case. “Additional Attorney General Amir Rehman has been preparing this case,” he told the court.
However, the additional attorney general told the court that he will be abroad for some official task till March 20, and so the hearing should be set on a date after that.
Justice Umer Ata Bandial – who was heading the full bench hearing the case – responded to this by setting the next hearing’s date for March 30. “One of the judges on the bench will be away after March 20 and we will hear the case upon his return,” he said. “The hearing would not be moved forward again, the government representative should be present in court on the given date,” he said.
Justice Bandial further announced that the request for action against Minister for Law and Justice Farogh Nasim will also be heard on March 30.
Javed was appointed by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government as attorney general after Anwar Mansoor Khan resigned from the office on Thursday.
The Pakistan Bar Council had demanded Mansoor’s resignation over some controversial comments he had made regarding Supreme Court judges, for which he had been reprimanded by the court as well.
Federal Minister for Law and Justice Farogh Nasim, in an informal conversation with reporters on Monday, said he regrets the words he used when defending the government against allegations that it had prior knowledge about the arguments former attorney general Anwar Mansoor Khan was going to make in court. “Mansoor sahib [ex-AGP] is like my elder brother, he is also like an elder brother to Khalid [current AGP]. I regret my choice of words [against former AG Mansoor] while on a TV show,” Nasim said.
But the law minister went on to add that despite his regret over his choice of words, “Our perspective on the matter is the same,” implying that the government did not have any prior knowledge of what Mansoor said in court.