Former Pak Chief Justice Chaudhry files fresh plea

Islamabad, Apr 27: Former Pakistani Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry in a fresh application to the Supreme Court has requested it to constitute a full court and hear his petition challenging his suspension, from next week on a day-to-day basis.

"The fresh application states that several important constitutional questions concerning the independence of judiciary, access to justice and very existence of the apex court itself have been raised in the main petition," Dawn newspaper reported.

When the petition was taken up by a three-member Supreme Court bench early this week, one of its members had declined to head the bench for being a signatory to the Supreme Judicial Council's endorsement of the presidential reference and had requested Acting Chief Justice Rana Bhagwandas to constitute a full court to hear a number of identical petitions filed on the issue.

President General Pervez Musharraf had sacked Justice Chaudhry on March 9 for alleged misuse of powers.

"It has been a long standing practice of this court to constitute full court for the consideration of important constitutional issues," the petitioner said in his application.

"Needless to say that the petition is one of its kinds never undertaken by this court, in fact the constitutional issues and questions involved in the petition are unprecedented," the application said.

It said the chief justice was unlawfully and illegally restrained from performing his functions as a judge and the chief justice of the apex court and was sent on forced leave through unprecedented executive orders.

"At the same time, on unfounded and baseless allegations the petitioner has been required to appear before the Supreme Judicial Council(SJC) where proceedings are continuing while the petitioner has prayed for a stay of the proceedings".

In the main petition, the chief justice had raised as many as 132 questions, including the competence of the SJC to try the Chief Justice of Pakistan(CJP), constitution of the Supreme Judicial Council without the CJP, personal bias and prospects of advancement of some of the members of the council, alleged mala fide and collateral purpose of the referring authority and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.

Other main questions are the haste with which the referring authority (the President) acted against the CJP, illegal suspension and forced leave, illegal assumption of office by the acting chief justice, executive assault on the independence of judiciary and proceedings in camera.

UNI