Islamabad:
The chief judge of Pakistan (CJP) Yahya Afridi, in his capacity as president of the Judicial Commission of Pakistan (JCP), trained a committee to write an objective criterion to select the judges for the constitutional benches.
Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail will direct the committee.
A notification issued in this regard indicated that, in the light of the president’s decisions during the three JCP meetings held on February 28, the committee was set up to write objective criteria for the appointment of judges under the clause (4) of article 175-A of the Constitution and for the selection of judges for the constitutional benches under the 191-A and 202-A articles.
The committee includes Mandokhail judge as chief, alongside the Attorney General of Pakistan (AGP) Mansoor Usman Awan, Senator Faroo Hamid Naek (Treasury Banks), Senator Syed Ali Zafar (opposition benches) and the representative of the Council of the Bar of Pakistan Ahsan Bhoon. Niaz Muhammad Khan will serve as secretary of the JCP.
However, the legal experts asked why the committee was not trained immediately after the adoption of the 26th amendment. Since the promulgation of the modification, the judges of the constitutional benches of the SC and the Sindh have been appointed without structured selection process.
The judge since the superior of SC, judge Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, had previously called to establish clear directives for the appointment and determination of the number of judges on the constitutional benches.
“The Commission has already appointed and determined a certain number of judges from the Supreme Court and the High Court of the Sindh for the CBS in the absence of any mechanism or criterion in place,” said a letter of nine pages written by J. Shah to the secretary of the JCP in December.
“Consequently, there was no logic or reason to support the appointment and determination of the number of judges for the CBS.”
Judge Shah said that the appointment and determination under articles 191a and 202a of the Constitution could not occur in the void, stressing that the JCP must first establish an objective criterion through the proposed rules.
“The extension of the existing CBS of the Supreme Court arrives tomorrow. Consequently, it is imperative and compulsory for the JCP to formulate a mechanism and criteria for the appointment and determination of judges for constitutional benches in the general interest of the public.”
Judge Shah suggested that the criteria could include the number of judgments reported by judges on the interpretation of the Constitution, including the Dissessions or Additional Tickets on the Constitutional Law which have been written by the judge while being part of a larger bench intended significant constitutional issues.
