The Supreme Court’s constitutional bench on Monday issued announcements to the acting Supreme Court of Islamabad High Court (IHC) and two other judges when it took the pleas who challenged their recent transfer to IHC and related changes in the court’s seniority list.
A five-member bench, led by Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar and including Justices Naeem Akhtar Afghan, Shahid Bilal Hassan, Salahuddin Panhwar and Shakeel Ahmed, heard several petitions filed by five sitting IHC judges and others.
Law of Law On February 1, a notification of the transfer of justice Sardar Muhammad Sarfraz Dogar, Justice Khadim Hussain Somro and Justice Muhammad Asif – from Lahore High Court, Sindh High Court and Balochistan High Court to IHC.
After this transfer, IHC issued a new seniority list that ranked Justice Dogar as the Senior Puisne judge. Five IHC referees – Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani, Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri, Justice Sardar Ejaz Ishaq Khan, Justice Babar Sattar and Justice Saman Rafat Imtiaz – later filed representations against Justice Dogar.
However, the then IHC High Court, Aamer Farooq rejected these representations. After raising Justice Farooq to the Supreme Court, Justice Dogar was also increased as IHC functioning Chief Justice.
The IHC judges, PTI founder Imran Khan, four different bar associations and a Raja Muscat Riaz Khan challenged Justice Aamer Farooq’s order in the Supreme Court.
During the hearing today, the lawyer of Pakistan Manssoor represented the government of Pakistan Awan. Other legal representatives included Idrees Ashraf (on behalf of former Prime Minister Imran Khan and Raja Muqsit), former Attorney General Munir A. Malik and lawyer Salahuddin Ahmed, representing the IHC judges.
The supreme court issued messages to all three transferred judges – justice Dogar, Justice Somro and Justice Asif – as well as to the lawyer. However, the bench rejected the requests’ request to limit the transferred judges from continuing their judicial tasks.
The consultation was postponed until April 17.
Pleas
The petitions seek to declare the transfer of judges to IHC as constitutional and request that the judges transferred to IHC have been detained from performing legal work until a final decision is made on the constitutional petitions.
They also claim that the transferred judges did not take oath as IHC judges and added that when the transmitted judges gave their oaths as judges of IHC, their seniority would have to be determined from the date the oath was administered to them.
