Supreme Court dismisses pleas challenging 26th constitutional amendments

• CJP wonders if lawyer was hired only to withdraw plea.
• Lawyer says his clients are withdrawing all petitions.
• Proposed amendments were challenged on September 16.
  

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court dismissed petitions on Thursday challenging the 26th proposed constitutional amendments after the petitioners sought withdrawal.

The government’s much-talked-about constitutional package aims, among other things, to establish a federal constitutional court and set a three-year tenure for the Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP).

A three-member bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa and comprising Justice Naeem Akhtar Afghan and Justice Shahid Bilal Hassan, heard the joint petition.

The petition was filed by former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association and current member of the Pakistan Bar Council, Abid S Zubairi, along with other council members, against the proposed constitutional amendments.

During the hearing, lawyer Hamid Khan requested the bench to withdraw the petitions. At this, the CJP wondered whether the petitioners had only hired Hamid, a leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), to withdraw their pleas.

“Abid Zubairi could have withdrawn the petition himself [...] Six lawyers had filed the petition; they could have appeared before the court themselves to withdraw it,” the top judge said.

The CJP then told the lawyer that two cases — the main petition and the plea against the objections to the petition — had been fixed for hearing.

The lawyer said that his clients wanted to withdraw all the pleas.

Zubairi, along with other Pakistan Bar Council members, had filed the petition in the apex court under Article 184(3) of the Constitution on September 16.

The petitioners requested the Supreme Court to declare that the separation of powers, judicial independence, and its authority to enforce fundamental rights are sacrosanct under the Constitution and beyond the power of Parliament to withdraw, interfere with, or alter in any way.

Furthermore, the petitioners asked the court to declare the proposed amendments, introduced through the bill, as unconstitutional and in violation of the basic structure of the Constitution, the principle of separation of powers, judicial independence, and the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution.

They also sought an injunction restraining the federal government from presenting the bill in Parliament, suspending the operation of the proposed amendments, and preventing the bill from being enacted into law if passed by both houses.

It is worth mentioning that several other petitioners had also challenged the proposed constitutional amendments in the Supreme Court, seeking a declaration that they violated the basic framework of the Constitution.

Similarly, many petitioners had challenged the proposed amendments in various high courts across the country as well.

Just a day before the withdrawal of the petitions, top political parties — Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, Pakistan Peoples Party, and the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl — had also forged a consensus on the amendments.