Division bench led by CJ Dogar: IHC turns down judge Jahangiri’s objections

ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Tuesday turned down Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri’s objections to a division bench led by Chief Justice Sardar Muhammad Sarfraz Dogar, which was hearing a case regarding his alleged fake law degree and appointment as a judge.

In yesterday’s (December 15) proceeding, Justice Jehangiri had raised a preliminary objection on the division bench and told the Chief Justice that he had filed a petition against the CJ. There is a strong case of a conflict of interest, and the CJ could not sit on a bench to hear a case against him.”

The IHC written order, issued on Tuesday, said that Justice Jahangiri’s objections to the chief justice on account of bias were found to have no legal basis. It also said the appeal seeking the transfer of the chief justice had already been dismissed by the Federal Constitutional Court.

Justice Jahangiri objects to IHC chief justice’s hearing degree case

Justice Jahangiri, in the last hearing, had argued that a ‘Quo Warran to’ writ is always heard by a single-judge bench instead of a division bench.

The court order said that “on the administrative side, keeping in view the sensitive nature of allegations of having an invalid/ fake degree having been levelled against a sitting judge of this court, it was deemed conducive, proper and in the fitness of things to constitute a division bench to hear this case instead of a single bench”.

It further said, “Even otherwise, the constitution of benches to hear cases is the sole prerogative of the Chief Justice.” It also noted that “it is not a first instance of this kind wherein the division bench has been constituted to hear a certain petition”.

The IHC also rejected a request to make the Islamabad District Bar Association a party in the case, stating that the Islamabad High Court Bar and the Islamabad Bar Council must be heard in the proceedings.

The order referred to several past rulings regarding the principle of recusal of judges on grounds of bias. It noted that in the case of Asif Ali Zardari vs The State (PLD 2001 SC 568), the Supreme Court had upheld that the “judge of a superior court is a keeper of his own conscience and it is for him to decide whether to hear or not to hear a matter before him.”

“In the Ms. Benazir Bhutto case vs The President of Pakistan’ (1992 SCMR 140), the issue of transfer of case before the judge based on bias was explained, and it was observed that there is a marked distinction in the approach on the question of bias between a case of a judge of a subordinate court and a case about a judge of a superior court in as much as in the former case, the superior courts do grant transfer applications on the ground of a judge having personal, pecuniary or proprietary interest in the subject matter whereas in the latter case, the Supreme Court does not grant transfer application on the above ground for want of power,” the IHC observed.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025