ISLAMABAD: The ongoing tussle between Pakistan’s parliament and judiciary intensified on Friday after the Senate passed a bill providing the right to appeal in cases initiated by judges on their own through suo moto proceedings.
The development comes at a time when lawmakers belonging to the coalition administration of the country have accused senior judges of the apex court of going beyond their constitutional mandate while hearing cases of vital political significance in recent weeks.
The Supreme Court (Review of Judgments and Orders) Bill, 2023, was moved by the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party’s Irfan Siddiqui in the upper house of parliament where it was passed by a majority of Senators.
“Parliament won’t digress from it by an inch and it won’t step back from it as well,” Dawn newspaper quoted law minister Azam Nazir Tarar as saying as former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party criticized the bill.
The government also came up with a legislation to limit the power of the country’s chief justice by depriving him of the authority to launch suo moto proceedings solely on his own and determine the composition of apex court benches without consulting other judges.
Tensions have been mounting between the government and the top court since the superior judiciary took up a case of election delay in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after their provincial assemblies were dissolved by ex-PM Khan and his allies in January.
The court instructed the country’s election commission to hold the Punjab polls on May 14 and ordered the central bank to release the required funds for the purpose.
The government maintained, however, the Supreme Court had gone beyond its constitutional mandate by issuing the rulings which challenged the principles of parliamentary supremacy and separation of powers.
More recently, lawmakers belonging to the coalition administration criticized an eight-member bench after it instructed the attorney general of Pakistan to share the parliamentary proceedings while hearing petitions challenging the legislation limiting the chief justice’s powers.
Pakistan’s National Assembly also asked its Public Accounts Committee to undertake a special audit of a Supreme Court judge, Mazahar Ali Akbar Naqvi, on Thursday following corruption allegations against him.
