Supreme Court adjourns suo moto hearing on dy speaker's ruling

ISLAMABAD: A five-member larger bench of the Supreme Court on Monday adjourned suo-moto hearing over ruling from Deputy Speaker Qasim Suri against no-confidence motion till tomorrow, ARY News reported.

The bench headed by Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial heard the case.

Farooq H Naek, who was representing PPP, asked the court to form a full court bench to which the chief justice asked if he does not have any trust on the existing bench.

“Constituting a full court will affect other court proceedings,” the CJP responded.

To this Naek said that they have complete confidence on the bench.

The chief justice asked him to continue with his arguments saying that they would be assessing the legal and constitutional merits of whatever happened in the National Assembly.

During his arguments, the PPP counsel said that the speaker violated his mandate and pushed the country towards a constitutional crisis. When the CJP asked him to share the facts, he said that Fawad Chaudhry made a speech over a letter received from abroad, which was first pointed out by Imran Khan in his speech on March 27.

He argued that it was why the April 3 was chosen for the voting day and even on the day, the speaker did not allow debate on the matter even when the entire day was left for the matter.

Justice Munib Akhtar further remarked that it is his personal opinion that it is the prerogative of the speaker to give ruling and none other than him and the deputy speaker is only bound to run affairs as per the rules.

The chief justice while leading the proceedings said that they would issue an appropriate order on the matter today and will only look into the proceedings of the National Assembly.

“We will not be listening to any other matter today,” he said.

Earlier in the day, Chief Justice Bandial said the Supreme Court will announce an “appropriate order today in the case.

As it adjourned the case, the top court said that it could not decide on the case without listening to everyone, as he adjourned the case till 12:05 pm tomorrow.

Naik earlier argued that no objection can be raised over the no-confidence motion. “The opposition submitted the no-trust motion and a requisition for the NA session on March 08,” the counsel said.

The Speaker had to summon the session on March 22, which was not happened and and he called the NA session on March 25 and later adjourned it till March 28.

Naik urged the court to decide on the case today but the court said it needed more time to hear the arguments of other lawyers.

The bench said the court’s decision would have far-reaching ramifications so it could not make haste in announcing its decision.