ISLAMABAD: While raising objection over the Supreme Court’s (SC) verdict that barred him to hear cases involving Prime Minister Imran Khan, Justice Qazi Faez Isa termed the order and events leading up to it suffer from the improprieties and illegalities.
On February 11, after dismissing the plea about allegations that the PM had distributed development funds among lawmakers, Chief Justice of Pakistan Gulzar Ahmed had said in a written order that Justice Isa “should not hear matters involving the prime minister”. Citing the reason of his order in the matter, the top judge had noted that since Justice Isa had filed a petition in personal capacity against PM Imran, it “would not be proper” for the former to hear cases involving the PM in order “to uphold the principle of un-biasness and impartiality”.
However, in a 28-page dissenting note to the February 11 order on Saturday, Justice Isa raised objections on 20 points from the judgement, underscoring that the decision undermines the judiciary and the SC.
Justice Isa pointed out that without informing the two-member bench, which was already hearing the matter, the chief justice decided to reconstitute the bench, expand it and exclude Justice Maqbool Baqar from it.
He further said that no one had alleged bias or lack of impartiality against any judge on the bench but without consulting the bench, the chief justice “tersely announced that a judge of the SC should not hear any case involving the prime minister”.
“The honourable chief justice arbitrarily introduced a non-issue bias and lack of impartiality on the part of a judge on the bench,” the note further read.
Justice Isa further objected that the judge was not made privy to the written order and that the order was sent to a junior judge while the senior judge was bypassed. “The ‘order of the court’ was not written and thus, not signed, therefore, there is no order of the court and the matter remains pending,” he stated, adding that the order was uploaded on the SC website before a judge had seen it”.
“The order and case file were not sent, in accordance with long-standing established practice, to the judge and the judge learnt of the order through the media,” Justice Isa said in the note underscoring that he had to later write to the registrar to seek the order and case file.
The justice further stressed that the paragraph 6 of the order is unconstitutional as it was not passed under any of the different jurisdictions of the SC stipulated in the Constitution. “Paragraph 6 of the order does not constitute a legal ‘order’ as per law and as per the precedents of this court,” he stated.
“In conclusion, I must say that it has been extremely painful for me to write this order. I apologise, if anything herein has hurt or offended as that has not been my intention. I have said what I felt I needed to say in the hope that unstructured discretion is curtailed.”
“Since it has never served any institution nor the interest of the people. To end on a positive note, the most resilient and finest institutions are those, wherein there is candour, transparency and legitimate dissent,” he said adding that he prays that courts stand against all manner of constitutional violations and safeguards the people against misuse of power.
It seems only Qazi Isa knows the constitution and other judges are ignorant of it . This is not “legitimate dissent” as he calls it; this is rebellion, misconduct and also contempt of court. He should do the people and himself a favour by resigning honourably, for he and his wife have been attacking the President, Prime Minister, FIA, former CJP Khosa and CJP Gulzar. His misconduct was overlooked when he called Shahzad Akbar as “Bahroopia” Nasim Farough as “Tout”. So far SJC has been tolerating him but now is the time to act and throw out this bane of the Supreme Court.