Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah has concurred with Justice Qazi Faez Isa in a written statement and termed the reconstitution of a Peshawar registry bench by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Mian Saqib Nisar “unprecedented” for it “undermines the integrity of the judicial system”.
In May 2018, Justice Qazi Faez Isa had expressed concerns over the reconstitution of a bench by the top judge while calling the move unwarranted and unprecedented.
Referring to the three-member bench to hear a case pertaining to hospital waste disposal from which he was excluded, the Supreme Court (SC) judge had authored a note, questioning the “unwarranted and unprecedented [move] to reconstitute a bench, in such a manner, while hearing a case”.
He had warned that it “undermines the integrity of the system, and may have serious repercussions”.
“I am constrained to write this as not doing so would weigh heavily on my conscience and I would be abdicating my responsibility as a judge,” wrote the SC judge.
The note referred to an incident during the case proceedings when Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Health Secretary Abid Majeed was reading out from a report on incinerators in government hospitals, which he said had been submitted on the directives of the human rights cell (HRC) of the apex court.
Justice Isa noted that he had called the KP advocate general to read out Article 184 (3) of the Constitution. He said this was done because he wanted to ascertain whether the said article could be invoked in the case being heard as the relevant material was absent from its file.
“However, before Article 184(3) could be read, the honourable chief justice intervened and said that he will be reconstituting the bench and suddenly rose up. The Bench was then presumably reconstituted, I say presumably because no order was sent to me to this effect. However, a two-member bench did assemble later, from which I was excluded,” he had explained.
