ISLAMABAD (APP): Supreme Court Wednesday ad-ourned hearing of a case regarding invoking the jurisdiction of suo moto notice by a bench till Thursday.
A five-member larger bench of the apex court headed by Acting Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial and comprising Justice Ijaz Ul Ahsan, Justice Munib Akhtar, Justice Qazi Muhammad Amin Ahmad and Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar heard the case.
During the course of proceedings, Attorney General for Pakistan (AGP) Khalid Khan said he would like to draw attention to an important issue before giving his opinion on the court order. He said a newspaper piece alluded to some sort of a divide amongst the court benches which recalled to the mind controversies of 1997 when one bench would hand out judgments against the other.
He said according to a letter written by Justice Isa which stated that the present bench was constituted to monitor the adjudication of the two-member bench earlier set up to hear journalists’ complaint case.
The acting CJP said this bench was not formed in parallel of the two-member bench. The AGP said the impression by Justice Isa’s letter that this hearing was commenced sooner only to affect the judgment on the journalists complaint case was not fair. It was the prerogative of the judges to opt for whichever case they prefer, he added.
Justice Qazi Muhammad Amin said the foremost priority of the apex court was to be united and it only to avoid such a suspicion that there was more than one judge on the bench.
Justice Bandial told AGP that the two-member bench of Justice Isa was in line with the judiciary’s order and the suggestion that this five-member bench was monitoring its ruling was not true. He told AGP to present his arguments on the questions raised by the bench here. After completion of arguments by the AGP, SC Bar Association president and PBC vice chairman would start their arguments over the matter.
