Justice Isa's letter suggests divides within top judiciary, AGP tells court

ISLAMABAD: The five-member Supreme Court bench hearing the grounds and authority of the suo moto cases in the backdrop of Justice Qazi Faez Isa’s cognizance of journalists’ harassment matter concurs the impression that this larger bench is monitoring adjudication of another bench or is in parallel to oversee the judgment is wrong, ARY News reported Wednesday.

The bench headed by the acting Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) noted the present five-member bench is not set up in parallel to the two-member bench whose implementation was retrained earlier this month.

He said it in response to the concern raised by the Attorney General of Pakistan (AGP) who said today that the schism-like situation had emerged in 1997 when the apex court benches turned against each other.

AGP Khalid Jawed Khan told the court that a newspaper piece alluded to some sort of a divide amongst the court benches which recalls to the mind controversies of 1997 when one bench would hand out judgments against the other.

He said of the letter by Justice Isa which says the present bench was constituted to monitor the adjudication of the two-member bench earlier set up to hear journalists’ harassment case.

This larger bench was put up to provide clarity with regard to the invocation of its suo motu jurisdiction after a two-member bench of the apex court headed by Justice Qazi Faez Isa had taken notice of alleged harassment of journalists on an application.

The Supreme Court had restrained on Monday the implementation of the decision of its two-member bench in the journalists’ harassment case, however, without suspending it.

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A five-member larger bench of the apex court headed by acting Chief Justice Umar Atta Bandial, hearing the journalists’ harassment case in a bid to provide clarity in respect of invocation of its suo motu jurisdiction.

Acting CJP said this bench is not set up in parallel of the two-member bench but only to

The AGP said in today’s hearing that the impression by Justice Isa’s letter that this hearing was commenced sooner only to affect the judgment on the journalist harassment case was not fair. It is the prerogative of the judges to choose to opt for whichever case they prefer.

Member of the bench hearing the case includes the acting CJP, Justice Ijaz ul Ahsan, Justice Munib Akhtar, Justice Qazi Muhammad Amin Ahmad and Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar.

Justice Qazi Muhammad Amin said the foremost priority of the SCP is to be united and it only to avoid such a suspicion that there is more than one judge on the bench.

Justice Umar Atta Bandial told AGP the two-member bench of Justice Isa was in line with the judiciary’s order and the suggestion that this five-member bench is montoring its ruling was not true.

He told AGP to present his arguments on the questions raised by the bench here.