ISLAMABAD – The Parliamentary Committee (PC) on judges’ appointment unanimously decided on Wednesday to request the prime minister that a review petition be filed in the Supreme Court on behalf of the federation, against the verdict of a four-member bench, which overturned the PC’s decision rejecting the Judicial Commission (JC)’s recommendation for one-year extension to six additional judges of the Lahore High Court (LHC) and Sindh High Court (SHC).
The PC decided that it would not file a review petition itself or appear in court because that would set a precedence of making parliamentary committees respondents. The committee observed that the final decision of the 17-member bench on the 18th Amendment to the constitution had been reserved and the four-member bench’s decision of overturning the parliamentary committee’s decision amounted to pre-empting the larger bench’s verdict.
“The committee has decided that a review petition should be filed on behalf of the federation against the Supreme Court’s verdict,” said PC Chairman Syed Nayyar Hussain Bokhari told reporters after a meeting.”We think the reasons for the rejection of the judges’ extension by the committee were not properly appreciated by the apex court in its short order,” he said, adding that the committee would decide whether to take the court’s detailed verdict to the parliament or not.
A four-member bench comprising Justice Mahmood Akhtar Shahid Siddiqui, Justice Jawwad S Khawaja, Justice Khilji Arif Hussain and Justice Tariq Parvez had overturned a Parliamentary Committee decision rejecting one-year extensions to six additional judges of the LHC and SHC on March 4, ordering the government to issue notifications for the extension.
The PC had rejected the JC’s recommendations to grant extensions to additional judges of the LHC Justice Muhammad Yawar Ali, Justice Syed Mazahir Ali Akbar Naqvi, Justice Mamood Rashid Sheikh and Justice Muhammad Farrakuh Irfan Khan, and Justice Tasnim Aslam and Justice Salman Hamid of the SHC. The JC had recommended names of 24 additional judges of the LHC, out of which 20 were endorsed by the PC. Similarly, four additional judges out of a total six recommended by the Judicial Commission were endorsed.
