ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court docket on Thursday dismissed petitions contesting the proposed constitutional amendments after the petitioners requested to withdraw them.
The federal government’s much-talked-about constitutional bundle goals, amongst different issues, to determine a federal constitutional courtroom and set a three-year tenure for the Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP).
A 3-member bench of the Supreme Court docket, 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 docket Bar Affiliation and present member of the Pakistan Bar Council, Abid S Zubairi, together with different council members, in opposition to the proposed constitutional amendments.
Through the listening to, lawyer Hamid Khan requested the bench to withdraw the petitions. At this, the CJP puzzled whether or not the petitioners had solely employed Hamid, a frontrunner of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), to withdraw their pleas.
“Abid Zubairi might have withdrawn the petition himself […] Six legal professionals had filed the petition; they may have appeared earlier than the courtroom themselves to withdraw it,” the highest decide mentioned.
The CJP then instructed the lawyer that two circumstances — the primary petition and the plea in opposition to the objections to the petition — had been fastened for listening to.
The lawyer mentioned that his purchasers wished to withdraw all of the pleas.
Zubairi, together with different Pakistan Bar Council members, had filed the petition within the apex courtroom below Article 184(3) of the Structure on September 16.
The petitioners requested the Supreme Court docket to declare that the separation of powers, judicial independence, and its authority to implement elementary rights are sacrosanct below the Structure and past the facility of Parliament to withdraw, intervene with, or alter in any manner.
Moreover, the petitioners requested the courtroom to declare the proposed amendments, launched by way of the invoice, as unconstitutional and in violation of the fundamental construction of the Structure, the precept of separation of powers, judicial independence, and the basic rights enshrined within the Structure.
Additionally they sought an injunction restraining the federal authorities from presenting the invoice in Parliament, suspending the operation of the proposed amendments, and stopping the invoice from being enacted into legislation if handed by each homes.
It’s price mentioning that a number of different petitioners had additionally challenged the proposed constitutional amendments within the Supreme Court docket, looking for a declaration that they violated the fundamental framework of the Structure.
Equally, many petitioners had challenged the proposed amendments in varied excessive courts throughout the nation as nicely.
Only a day earlier than the withdrawal of the petitions, prime political events — Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, Pakistan Peoples Occasion, and the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl — had additionally solid a consensus on the amendments.