Retired Supreme Court (SC) judge Maqbool Baqar has said he also supports the call for a full court hearing relating to the Punjab deputy speaker’s ruling on the Punjab chief minister election, echoing the sentiments of the coalition government.
A three-member apex court bench, comprising Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial, Justice Ijazul Ahsan and Justice Munib Akhter, is hearing a plea at the Supreme Court’s Lahore Registry filed by Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid’s (PML-Q) Parvez Elahi, was Hamza Shehbaz’s opponent for the role of Punjab CM.
As per a report by The News, a former chief justice of Pakistan as well as two recently retired judges have all, on the condition of anonymity, expressed support for a full court hearing. They said the full court hearing is the only way out of this situation, and would strengthen the judicial process and uphold the judiciary’s honour and neutrality.
Retired judge Maqbool Baqar told Geo News that the ‘destructive process of re-writing’ the Constitution has begun, and that the Supreme Court does not comprise of the chief justice alone. He said that he was taken aback by what he termed a ‘clear violation’ of judicial tradition of bench formation.
Baqar also claimed that since the Supreme Court has been presented with a very ‘sensitive’ Constitutional matter, there should be no harm in assigning it to a full bench for this.
He said that the verdict of a full court would be more balanced.
