Islamabad:
Meetings of the Judicial Commission of Pakistan (JCP) Meetings led by justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail are scheduled for August 21 to prepare draft rules for the annual judicial performance evaluation of the Supreme Court judges and criteria for the selection of judge for constitutional benches.
Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Yahya Afridi had previously formed two committees led by Justice Mandokhail. Other members include the Attorney General for Pakistan (AGP) Mansoor Awan, Senator Farooq H Naek (from Treasury Benches), Senator Ali Zafar (from opposition benches) and Pakistan bar Council representative Ahsan Bhoon.
The first committee was to prepare proposed rules for establishing effective standards for the annual performance evaluation of the Supreme Court judges under Article 175a (20) of the Constitution, deployed through the 26th constitutional amendment.
CJP had compiled this committee during the JCP meeting on June 19.
Previously, CJP Afridi had also formed a committee consisting of the same members to prepare an objective criterion for selecting judges for constitutional benches.
A notification issued in this regard stated that in the light of the President’s decisions under three JCP meetings held on February 28, the committee was tasked with preparing objective criteria for appointing judges under Klaus (4) of Article 175a of the Constitution and for the selection of judges for constitutional benches in accordance with Article 191-A and 202-A.
Interestingly, JCP had decided to form a rules committee in January, and CJP Yahya Afridi issued its review on March 4th. However, the committee has not held any meeting in the last five months.
Legal experts have since questioned why the committee was not composed immediately after the adoption of the 26th amendment. Since its adoption, the judges of the Supreme Court and Sindh High Court’s constitutional benches have been appointed without a structured selection process.
However, the government has been fully satisfied with the execution of the Supreme Court’s constitutional benches approving the trial against civilians in military courts approved the transfer of judges from various high courts to Islamabad High Court and canceled the reserved seats’ decision that had declared PTI, who are entitled to reserved seats after 2024 parliamentary members.
Meanwhile, the constitutional bench has not yet taken petitions that challenge its creation. Lawyers have also raised questions about wisdom and logic behind the nomination of a particular set of judges for constitutional benches, pointing out that judges who are perceived as critical of the current regime are often excluded.
Attorney Rida Hosain expressed surprise that a judge who was only a few days ago could be nominated for a constitutional bench, while several senior Supreme Court judges with extensive constitutional expertise were not. In the absence of clear criteria, she noted, such nominations occur arbitrarily.
Shortly after the passage of the 26th constitutional amendment, SC Senior Puisne -Judge Syed Mansoor Ali Shah had invited to establish clear guidelines to nominate and determine the number of judges on constitutional benches.
“The Commission has already nominated and established a number of judges by the Supreme Court and Sindh High Court for CBS in the absence of any mechanism or criteria in place,” Justice Shah wrote in a nine-page letter to the JCP secretary last December.
“Therefore, there has been no logic or reason to support the nomination and decision of the number of judges for CBS.” Justice Shah emphasized that nominations according to articles 191A and 202A in the Constitution cannot be made in a vacuum and that JCP must first establish objective criteria through the proposed rules.
He suggested that such criteria could include the number of reported constitutional judgments written by a judge, including dissent or additional notes, while serving on larger benches that heard significant constitutional cases.
