Daily Times

Supreme Court has formed a larger bench to hear former Islamabad High Court judge Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui’s petition against his termination from the service. Siddiqui had challenged Supreme Judicial Council’s decision to remove him from the services.

The SC larger bench, headed by Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial, include Justice Sardar Tariq, Justice Ijazul Ahsan, Justice Mazhar Alam and Justice Sajjad Ali Shah. The five-member bench will hear the case on June 13.

The Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) removed him as IHC judge in 2018, days after he launched into a diatribe against the country’s premier intelligence agency the ISI while addressing a Rawalpindi Bar Association event.

By that time and in an unrelated development, Siddiqui had also faced allegations of financial corruption. However, a reference against him on those allegations remained pending. The said reference was filed in 2015 and stemmed from the heavy expenditure incurred on the renovation of Siddiqui’s government residence.

In November 2021, Pakistan Bar Council restored Shaukat Siddiqui’s lawyer licence after concluding that the decision of his dismissal as a judge was not based on financial corruption or ethical grounds.

Shaukat Siddiqui had applied for the restoration of the licence on September 6, 2021.

Siddiqui would not appear before the Islamabad High Court where he served as judge to uphold the tradition which forbids former judges to appear as lawyers before courts where they worked as a judge in the past.