ISLAMABAD: A review petition has been moved in the Supreme Court of Pakistan, requesting it to reconsider its judgement over secrecy/confidentiality of the number of references against the judges pending before the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC).
On September 29, Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali had ruled that the contentions of the petition seeking disclosure of pending references before the SJC were violative of the spirit of Article 209 and Article 211 of the constitution, read with the SJC Procedure of Enquiry, 2005.
“It is one of the important aspects of proceedings before the Supreme Judicial Council that at every stage of its proceedings… 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 overriding effect to it,” the chief justice observed in his two-page ruling. The ruling came after an in-camera proceeding conducted by the chief justice over the objections of the SC Registrar Office challenged by Pakistan Bar Council’s Human Rights Committee Chairman Advocate Muhammad Raheel Kamran on a petition against the SJC.
Raheel Kamran had filed an appeal against the order of the Registrar Office refusing to entertain the constitutional petition. The petitioner had prayed to make public the disclosure of the total number of references/ complaints filed before the SJC since its constitution. He wanted to know in how many cases proceedings were initiated, how many references/complaints were dropped after consideration, how many references/complaints had become infructuous.
He had further prayed to dispose of all references filed against judges of the Supreme Court and the high courts as expeditiously as possible.
Now, Raheel Kamran in his review petition stated that the chief justice of Pakistan – being the chairman of the SJC – the respondent, or any other member of the SJC could not hear and decide the fate of the constitutional petition filed by the applicant.
The applicant relied on the case of former chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry versus the president of Pakistan and others, wherein a 13-member bench of the top court had allowed the constitutional petition and quashed the proceedings before the SJC – the judges who were part of the SJC did not hear and decide the case.
The appeal further stated that the order dated September 29 was based on erroneous interpretation of the provisions of articles 19A, 184(3), 209 and 211 of the constitution as well as Rule 13 of the SJC Procedure for Enquiry, 2005, and the same was, inter alia, contrary to the judgement in the case of ex-CJP Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry versus the president of Pakistan and others. The applicant stated that independence of judiciary was one of the hallmarks of our constitution. Article 2-A of the Constitution of Islamic Republic of Pakistan, 1973 clearly mandates that independence of the judiciary shall be fully secured, he said. However, he said in the plea that part of the prayer in the constitutional petition seeking expeditious disposal of all complaints/references pending had not been given any consideration at all in the order.
“Indeed such a prayer could never be objected to for, as stated hereinabove, it is a condition precedent for the independence of the judiciary that any judge against whom any complaint/reference is kept pending indefinitely may not be able to discharge his judicial obligations independently and without fear or favour,” the review stated.