The Supreme Court granted time to former ambassador Husain Haqqani’s counsel Asma Jahangir on Tuesday to file additional documents containing more grounds in support of his review petition against the court’s December 30, 2011 order, which declared the petitions for investigation into the memo controversy maintainable and constituted a three-member judicial commission headed by Balochistan High Court Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa to probe the matter and submit its report within four weeks.
When a nine-member special bench of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry took up the review petition of Haqqani against the court’s order and Shahid Orakzai’s petition challenging the composition of the judicial commission probing the memo issue, Asma stated that she had just obtained the certified copy of the court’s detailed judgement on the memo issue, thus she required some time to file additional grounds in support of Haqqani’s review petition.
The court accepted her request for more time and adjourned the hearing for an indefinite period. The court also issued a notice to Attorney General Maulvi Anwarul Haq to assist it on another petition against the composition of the judicial commission probing the memo issue.
In his review petition, Haqqani stated that the court had heard the petitions on the question of maintainability, however in its December 30 order it fully exhausted the entire relief sought by the petitioners in every respect.
He requested the court to stay proceedings before the judicial commission until the disposal of the review petition, as he said he would suffer irreparable harm if the commission reached a conclusion while his review petition was still pending.
