Islamabad:

Islamabad High Court’s (IHC) Justice Babar Sattar has noticed that the IHC chief of law has no authority to decide – on the administrative side or otherwise – as if a bench should hear a case or not.

“When a case is set for consultation before a single or division bench, it is for such a bench to determine whether the circumstances arise for the case to be transferred to another bench, including because of a judge of a judge consisting of the bench,” the judge said in a three -page.

An IHC bench including Justice Sattar on March 14 decided it would be in justice if another bench heard a case. However, the file’s file had “inexplicably” returned to the bench.

The file contained comments registered on the administrative side of IHC functioning Chief Justice Muhammad Sarfraz Dogar that the case should be heard by the same bench.

In comments on the development, justice declared Sattar that the case’s return to this bench “must have been an unintended mistake from the Justice Secretary’s office and/or staff at the Hon’ble Acting Chief Justice Office.”

He said that once the judge consists of a bench decides that he/she would not like to hear the case for the reasons stated, the said legal order is not available for interference with the office of Chief Justice or Registrar considering it as an administrative case.

“The obligation to determine urgent and ordinary cases before the available benches fall within the domain of the Deputy Generator in accordance with the High Court rules adopted by IHC.

“The responsibility for Chief Justice is to approve the watch list for the benches of the Court prepared by the Deputy Generator. But when such a list is prepared and approved, Chief Justice has no role to play in the fixing of every case filed before the court.

“It is only where a bench seized by a case opens up that a larger or special bench is made up to hear the case that the case should be referred to Chief Justice when the High Court rules earn in his office authority to approve the list of benches,” he added.

Justice Sattar stated that the current practice of referring the question of a bench’s desire to reject from hearing a case to Chief Justice for the distribution and transfer from one court to another is not in line with the High Court rules.

“In the event of a withdrawal or where the need arises to transfer a case out of the bench on the bench seized by it, the case should be marked to the Deputy Generator for Location before another available bench, considering the list of seated benches approved by Chief Justice.

“Therefore, let the file be sent to the Deputy Registrar (Court) to this court, which will ensure that it is determined by another available bench in accordance with the approved list of seated benches that do not include any of the judges [of the existing bench that heard the matter]“He added.