ISLAMABAD: Former Islamabad High Court (IHC) judge Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui submitted a plea on Monday challenging the Supreme Court (SC) registrar’s rejection of his petition against his dismissal by the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC), that had been filed last week.
On October 11, President Arif Alvi had removed Siddiqui on the SJC’s recommendation that had unanimously found the IHC judge “guilty of misconduct” over an anti-ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] speech that he had delivered before the Rawalpindi District Bar Association on July 21.
On Monday, the former IHC judge challenged the registrar’s objections, claiming that his plea addressed “a case of common welfare” and the apex court had referred to Section 3 of the Article 184 when ruling justice in such cases.
“The Iftikhar Chaudhry case precedent is also present in this regard,” he stated in his appeal.
Siddiqui also demanded that the SC registrar’s objections need to be set aside and his case needs to be heard in open court.
The SC registrar had rejected his plea against dismissal on November 2.
One of the grounds for dismissal was that “the petitioner is invoking extraordinary jurisdiction of the Supreme Court under Article 184(3) of the Constitution for the redressal of an individual grievance, which is not permissible in terms of judgment in terms of judgment reported as 1998 SCMR 793 titled as Zulfiqar Mehdi Vs PIA etc”.
Justice Siddiqui, in his constitutional petition, had contended that he was terminated without due process and that his ouster was done without [the SJC] fulfilling legal prerequisites. He had filed the petition under Article 184(3) of the Constitution of Pakistan, claiming that “he was discriminately sacked on account of making a public speech”.