- The President gives his assent to the bill on the PM’s advice.
- Consent given to bill after nod from both houses.
- Senate greenlights bill after changes from NA.
ISLAMABAD: President Asif Ali Zardari on Thursday gave his assent to the much debated 27th constitutional amendment after approval by Parliament.
With the President’s signature, the amendment has now officially become part of the Constitution.
“The Constitution (Twenty-seventh Amendment) Bill, 2025, as recommended by the Prime Minister [Shehbaz Sharif]in Section 5 of the Summary,” read a statement issued by the President’s House.
The development came moments after the Senate approved the amendment following amendments approved by the National Assembly a day earlier, amid noisy protests from the opposition.
Union Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar presented the constitutional amendment bill today with the tweaks to the draft earlier approved by the upper house. The amendment received 64 votes (a two-thirds majority in the 96-member Parliament) in favor and four against.
Announcing the result, Senate Chairman Yousuf Raza Gilani said, “So the motion is passed by the votes of not less than two-thirds of the total membership of the Senate and accordingly the bill is passed.”
The much-discussed bill was initially tabled in the upper house of parliament on Monday and received the nod on the same day. It was then referred to NA who approved it with some changes. Therefore, the legislation was re-introduced in the Senate today to approve the latest changes.
New tweaks
A day earlier, the National Assembly passed the amendment, which seeks to change the judicial structure and military command, by 234 votes to four amid the opposition’s decline. It contained eight amendments – not part of the earlier version approved by the Senate – aimed at clarifying the chief justice’s position.
The amended bill fine-tunes the structure of the newly created Federal Constitutional Court (FCC), clarifies the titles and ranks of the country’s top judges, and removes several clauses from the Senate-approved draft that had sought to change oath-related provisions for various constitutional offices.
One of the most important updates relates to Clause 2, which amends Article 6(2A) of the Constitution – the High Treason Article. The National Assembly’s version adds the phrase “Federal Constitutional Court” after “the”, thereby explicitly including the new court within the scope of Article 6. The earlier Senate draft had not mentioned the court by name.
The House of Commons also introduced a new clause 2A to amend Article 10(1). 4, which deals with preventive detention. This revision adds the words “Supreme Court” in the explanatory part of this article.
Meanwhile, the National Assembly deleted several provisions that had appeared in the Senate version. Paragraphs 4, 19, 51 and 55 – which collectively proposed to change the wording of oaths administered to a number of constitutional officers – were removed from the final text.
Clause 4 sought to revise Article 42, under which the President takes the oath of office before the Chief Justice of Pakistan, by substituting the term “Chief Justice of Pakistan” for “Chief Justice of the Federal Constitutional Court.”
Likewise, Clause 19 proposed amendments to Article 168, which regulates the appointment and oath of the Auditor General of Pakistan. It would have added the term “Supreme Court” before “Chief Justice of Pakistan”, thereby slightly altering the formal wording of the oath.
Section 51 mirrored this approach to Article 214, which requires the Chief Election Commissioner to take an oath before the Chief Justice. The Senate draft proposed to replace this with “Chief Justice of the Federal Constitutional Court.”
Correspondingly, section 55 sought to amend article 255, subsection 2, which applies in cases where an oath cannot be administered to the designated official. At present the Chief Justice of Pakistan may appoint another person; The Senate version proposed transferring this authority to the Chief Justice of the Federal Constitutional Court.
All these oath-related proposals were ultimately omitted by the National Assembly.
Another important change came in Clause 23, which amends Article 176 to include a proviso specifying that “notwithstanding anything contained in the Constitution, the sitting Chief Justice shall continue to be known as the Chief Justice of Pakistan during his tenure.”
A further addition was made under section 56, which now defines “Chief Justice of Pakistan” as “the senior among the Chief Justice of the Federal Constitutional Court and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court”, establishing a formal hierarchy between the two judicial heads.
The multi-clause amendment required a two-thirds majority in the 336-member Parliament. The ruling coalition easily secured the required votes, with PML-N holding 125 seats, PPP 74, MQM-P 22, PML-Q four, Istehkam-e-Pakistan Party four and one seat each held by PML-Z, Balochistan Awami Party and National Peoples Party.
However, four members from the JUI-F, once a close ally of the ruling PML-N, were the only legislators who registered their votes against the amendments.
