A five-member constitutional bench of the Supreme Court issued notices to the Islamabad High Court (IHC) acting chief justice and its two other judges as it took up pleas against their recent transfer to the court and the subsequent changes in the seniority list.
The bench — headed by Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar and comprising Justices Naeem Akhtar Afghan, Shahid Bilal Hassan, Salahuddin Panhwar, and Shakeel Ahmed — took up petitions filed by five IHC judges, the Karachi Bar Association (KBA) and the IHC Bar Association, among others.
In February, Justice Sardar Mohammad Sarfraz Dogar from the Lahore High Court (LHC), Justice Khadim Hussain Soomro from the Sindh High Court (SHC) and Justice Muhammad Asif from the Balochistan High Court (BHC) were transferred to the IHC.
The controversy centres around the alteration of the judges’ seniority list after these transfers as Justice Dogar was made the senior puisne judge, which paved the way for his appointment as the acting IHC CJ after Justice Aamer Farooq’s elevation to the SC.
Today, the five-member bench took up a set of petitions over the matter.Attorney General for Pakistan (AGP) Mansoor Usman Awan appeared before the court to represent the government, while Idrees Ashraf was present as the lawyer for ex-premier Imran Khan and Raja Muqsit.
Ex-AGP Munir A. Malik and former SHC Bar Association president Barrister Salahuddin Ahmed appeared to plead the case on behalf of the IHC judges. Faisal Siddiqui attended the hearing as the KBA counsel, while Hamid Khan was present as the Lahore Bar Association’s (LBA) lawyer.
The bench served notices to the three transferred judges — namely IHC acting CJ Dogar, as well as justices Soomro and Asif. It also issued notices to the registrars of the IHC and the other three high courts from where judges were transferred.
However, the bench rejected the petitioners’ request to restrain the transferred judges from performing their duties.President Asif Ali Zardari on February 1 had approved the transfer of one judge each from the high courts of Lahore, Balochistan and Sindh to the IHC, despite opposition from five of its judges. They had warned in a letter to top judges that any such move would “violate constitutional procedures and judicial norms”.
