Memo commission gets four-week lifeline

A hurriedly constituted 10-member larger bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, granted four more weeks to the memo commission on Thursday to complete probe into the memo controversy. The time granted to the memo commission for completing probe of the memo issue was expiring on May 12 and as judges would not have been available to form a larger bench on that day, the chief justice hurriedly formed a 10-judge larger bench that gave four more weeks to the commission to complete the task.
At the onset of hearing, Deputy Attorney General Dil Muhammad Zai opposed the grant of four more weeks to the commission, while the other parties involved in the memo issue did not raise any objection to the extension. Justice Jawwad S Khawaja expressed astonishment over the opposition of deputy attorney general on the extension, asking him to tell who had instructed him to oppose the extension. The deputy attorney general informed the bench that he was instructed by Attorney General Irfan Qadir to oppose the time extension. He said Qadir was of the view that sufficient time had been granted to the commission to complete the probe, besides two extensions had also already been given to it to complete the task. The chief justice then noted that in case of non extension of time to the commission, the investigation report could be affected. The chief justice also noted that the court was unable to understand that why the attorney general had opposed the extension when the commission was in the final stage to compile and present its report.