File photo of Pakistan Senate
The Senate on Thursday passed the Supreme Court (Practice and Procedure) Bill 2023 a day after the National Assembly had approved it in a bid to curtail the Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP)’s discretionary powers to take suo motu notice.
Introduced on Tuesday, the bill was first approved by the federal cabinet, after which it was forwarded to the National Assembly Standing Committee on Law and Justice for its consent. Following the committee’s approval, the bill was presented in the National Assembly, where it passed with a last-minute amendment granting the right of appeal to all previous judgements delivered under Article 184(3) of the Constitution.
According to government officials, the bill was tabled on concerns raised by Justices Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and Jamal Khan Mandokhail of the Supreme Court in a dissenting note. In their note, the two judges had said the apex court “cannot be dependent on the solitary decision of one man, the Chief Justice.”
The amendments to the draft bill were granting the right to appeal against all previous suo motu verdicts, as long as applications are field within 30 days of the passage of the law and requiring all cases that involve interpreting the Constitution to have benches of five or more judges.
During Senate proceedings on Thursday, opposition senators claimed the bill was being passed in haste and should be returned to the standing committee for further deliberation before being voted on. Senator Ali Zafar, who is also the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)’s lawyer in various cases, claimed some sections of the bill required a constitutional amendment and should be excised before its passage. He also claimed that “some” lawyers’ forums were against it, though admitted that several of the bill’s clauses had been longstanding demands of the legal fraternity.
Earlier, moving the bill, Law Minister Azam Nazir Tarar stressed that additional changes to the law could be legislated in future, noting that laws changes in accordance with the needs of the public. “A new trend was seen in the Supreme Court in the past two decades—instead of running the court through collective thinking, the court became dependent on an individual,” he said, arguing that bar councils, bar associations, Parliament, civil society, the business sector and government officials were all in its favor.
Slamming the excessive use of Article 184(3) of the Constitution witnessed in recent years, he said: “Executives were made to stand on the rostrum repeatedly. Such suo motu notices were taken … that matters of cleaning streets were also brought up,” he said, lamenting that the state had incurred losses worth billions of dollars due to suo motu notices, including in the Steel Mills and Reko Diq cases.
Defending the bill further, he said there had been demands to curtail the suo motu powers during various Senate sessions. He also referred to Supreme Court rulings in which judges had raised concerns over only one man having the power to constitute benches. “Only collective thinking takes institutions forward. If you want to strengthen institutions, then strengthen the system instead of the personalities so that the institution can deliver,” he added.