A nine-member larger bench of the Supreme Court (SC) headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry will resume hearing today (Monday) on a set of identical constitutional petitions filed by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Nawaz Sharif and others seeking probe into the memo controversy, which has overshadowed the entire political scenario of the country. The court will also examine a host of replies, applications and affidavits filed by the respondents and petitioners in the memo scandal. Although the apex court set December 16 as the deadline for filing replies in the memo controversy, no government official is sure if or when President Asif Ali Zardari would file his response.The federation, instead of filing its formal reply to the memo case, has challenged the SC’s jurisdiction to hear pleas into the memo issue under Article 184(3) of the constitution.Almost all leading constitutional experts of the country, including Justice (r) Fakhruddin G Ebrahim, Justice (r) Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui, Abdul Hafeez Pirzada, Justice (r) Tariq Mahmood, Barrister Kamal Azfar, Hamid Khan, Khalid Anwar, Justice (r) Rasheed A Rizvi, Khalid Ranjha, Barrister Makhdoom Ali Khan and Asma Jahangir, counsel for former ambassador to US Hussain Haqqani – a central character of the memo issue – unanimously agree that the SC has the jurisdiction to hear the memo case. However a minority believes that the apex court showed haste in issuing notices to the respondents on the preliminary hearing of the case. Despite the opinion of the legal experts, the federation remains adamant in challenging the SC’s jurisdiction to entertain petitions against the memo issue, arguing that no violation of fundamental rights of the petitioners was involved in the case. Some legal experts believe that the replies filed by the ministries of Foreign Affairs and Interior could not be treated as the federation’s reply. They were commenting on the argument by some quarters that the reply of the ministries filed through Attorney General Maulvi Anwarul Haq could be considered the federation’s response. The law experts said the federation would have to file a separate reply which would be considered the president’s response.