ISLAMABAD: The constitutional bench of the Supreme Court will hear several important cases, including appeal against SC judgment on military courts, and petitions of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and others in alleged rigging in the February 8 general elections next week.
A seven-judge Constitutional Bench, headed by Justice Aminuddin Khan, comprising Justice Jamal Mandokhail, Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar, Justice Hassan Rizvi, Justice Musarrat Hilali, Justice Naeem Afghan and Justice Shahid Bilal Hassan will hear a total five petitions on Monday (December 9).
The PTI and its founder Imran Khan had filed the joint petition through advocate Hamid Khan, requesting to constitute an inquiry commission to probe into the alleged rigging in the February 2024 general elections.
The plea says that Rawalpindi commissioner had also levelled allegations of rigging in the elections but no one, including the then chief justice of Pakistan, Qazi Faez Isa, summoned him to prove his claims. “That a judicial commission, consisting of serving Supreme Court judges holding no bias towards anyone, be formed to inquire, audit, and examine the manner and process of the general elections of February 8, 2024, and the developments that took place thereafter of compiling false and fraudulent results rendering winners into losers and losers into winners,” the petition stated.
It further requested the top court to immediately suspend all consequential acts of forming governments at the federal level and in Punjab at the provincial level, until the results of the judicial probe were made public. “There were obvious and apparent developments on the 8th and 9th of February 2024, witnessed by the whole country, that have completely exposed this fraudulent game of turning losers into winners,” the plea said.
The bench would also hear two suo motu cases on December 9 – one regarding the murder of journalist Arshad Sharif and the other on deaths of children in Mithi, Sindh.
On December 10, a petition against the formation of a judicial commission on the May 9, 2023 violence and the trial of civilians in military courts has been scheduled for hearing. The bench would also hear 1,178 tax cases and an application for transfer of PTI founder from Adiala Jail to a Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa jail due to security concerns the same day. The application was filed by a petitioner named Muhammad Qayyum Khan. The Registrar’s Office had raised objections to the petition. However, the seven-member constitutional bench would hear the petition along with the registrar’s objections, according to the cause list.
A phone tapping case, pending since 1993, has been scheduled for hearing on December 11. The PTI founder’s petition against Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja had been fixed for hearing on December 11.
The case of formation of a judicial commission to investigate the February 8, 2024 general elections had also been fixed for hearing on December 11, according to the cause list.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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