ISLAMABAD – The Supreme Court (SC) was told on Tuesday that the reasons given by the Parliamentary Committee (PC) for rejecting a year-long extension in the services of six additional judges of the Lahore High Court (LHC) and Sindh High Court (SHC) were allegedly based upon the reservations of one of the members of the Judicial Commission (JC).
A four-member SC bench comprising Justice Mahmood Akhtar Shahid Siddiqui, Justice Jawwad S Khawaja, Justice Khilji Arif Hussain and Justice Tariq Parvez was hearing two identical petitions against the PC’s controversial decision. Makhdoom Ali Khan, counsel for the petitioners, told the court that a two-member SC bench had overruled the decision of the PC, which had denied extensions to four additional judges of the LHC, namely Justice Muhammad Yawar Ali, Justice Syed Mazahir Ali Akbar Naqvi, Justice Mamoon Rashid Sheikh and Justice Muhammad Farrakuh Irfan Khan on February 2. He said that later, the PC on February 22 rejected JC’s recommendations for the extension in the service of two additional judges of the SHC, Justice Tasneem Aslam and Justice Salman Hamid.
He argued that in the reasons, which were communicated to the JC, there were no words which indicated that it was the JC’s collective reasons. He argued that the PC had a limited role and it could not revise the recommendations of the JC. Justice Tariq Parvez said that under the 19th Amendment, “reasons” mean that PC should have its own independent reasons, but the reasons presented to the court were words uttered by one of the members of the JC.
