Supreme Court says it has appellate jurisdiction over rent, family matters
ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court made clear it has appellate jurisdiction over rent and the family matters under Article 185(3) of the constitution.
The short order of the apex court, written by Chief Justice of Pakistan Yahya Afridi overruled an objection raised by the SC Registrar Office regarding the maintainability of a civil petition for Leave to Appeal on the ground that the impugned judgment was rendered by the High Court under Article 199 of the Constitution in a rent matter, and thus, is not maintainable before this Court under the present constitutional dispensation, introduced by the Twenty-Seventh Constitutional Amendment.
The order noted that the contention so placed (by office) was that following the insertion of Article 175F by the Twenty-Seventh Constitutional Amendment, and in view of clause (1) (c) thereof, the High Court functions as the final judicial forum in rent matters, and as such, no appeal against a judgment pertaining to a rent matter lies before the Supreme Court. The office further took the position that while Article 185 (3) confers a general appellate jurisdiction upon this Court, Article 175F (1) (c), being a specific provision introduced subsequently, excludes rent matters from all appellate forums beyond the High Court altogether.
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The order said; “Article 185(3) of the Constitution operates as a general source of appellate jurisdiction of the Court in respect of judgments, decrees, orders or sentences of a High Court, subject to the exclusion contained in its provision, namely cases to which clause (1) of Article 175F applies. Article 175F (1), sets out the appellate jurisdiction of the Federal Constitutional Court, and by virtue of the proviso to clause (1) (c), expressly excludes, inter alia, from its jurisdiction cases relating to rent and family matters.”
The question arisen whether judgments or orders of a High Court pertaining to rent and family matters, which, by the reason of the express exclusion in its proviso, do not fall within the ambit of Article 175F (1) of the Constitution, and thus, are to be regarded as cases “to which clause (1) of Article 175F applies” for the purposes of the proviso to Article 185(3).
The Court noted that the issue is whether the express exclusion of rent and family matters from the appellate jurisdiction of the Federal Constitutional Court operates to remove such matters altogether from the appellate framework beyond High Court, including the Supreme Court, or whether, by that very exclusion, they stand outside the operation of Article 175(1), thereby attracting the appellate jurisdiction of this Court under Article 185(3), subject to grant of leave.
“Since the controversy turns on the operation of two provisos, it is appropriate to briefly advert to the function of a proviso in general. A proviso necessarily operates in relation to the subject matter covered by the enacting part of the provision. Depending on its language and placement, a proviso may serve different purposes. Most commonly, however, and as is the case here, a proviso functions to qualify the generality of the main enactment by excepting certain matters from its operation. Such a proviso is commonly described as a “true proviso”.
“It is a recognised principle that a true proviso performs the function of carving out an exception which, but for the proviso, would fall within the language and scope of the enacting provision. In doing so, it qualifies the generality of the substantive provision by providing an exception and taking that exception out, as it were a portion, from the scope of applicability of the substantive provision.
The order said that applying the foregoing understanding to the present case, the proviso to Article 175F(1)(c) which stipulates that: “no appeal shall lie against a judgment or an order of a High Court made under Article 199, in a case which relates to rent and family,” operates as a true proviso. It qualifies the generality of clause (1)(c) of Article 175F by expressly excluding rent and family matters from its scope. By the operation of this exclusion, the proviso takes rent and family matters out, as they were a portion, from the scope of applicability of Article 175F(1)(c) of the Constitution, thereby removing such matters from the operative field of that provision.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026