ISLAMABAD, April 23: Adviser to the prime minister and senior lawyer Sharifuddin Pirzada will defend President Pervez Musharraf as his leading counsel when the Supreme Court will take up on Tuesday a petition filed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry challenging the presidential reference.
At the last hearing the Supreme Court had served notices on President Musharraf and other respondents on the petition.
Earlier, Mr Pirzada had declined to represent the government before the Supreme Judicial Council and expressed displeasure over the way the chief justice had been removed from office and the reference filed against him.
The Tuesday’s hearing coincides with the proceedings in the SJC on the reference. As the five-member SJC will wait to decide the fate of Justice Chaudhry being the highest adjudicator of the country in the same premises, the defence counsel, comprising Justice Sardar Mohammad Raza Khan, Justice Chaudhry Ijaz Ahmed and Justice Hamid Ali Mirza, will appear before a three-member SC bench to plead CJ’s petition.
Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan, leading a six-member defence panel, had announced last week that they would prefer to present their case before the Supreme Court instead of attending the proceedings of the SJC because they considered the apex court superior to the council.
Mr Pirzada will be assisted by Advocate Maqbool Ellahi Malik while Iftikhar Gillani will represent the federal government. Malik Mohammad Qayyum is appearing on behalf of the federal government in a separate petition filed by Barrister Zafarullah as president of the Watan Party challenging the formation of the SJC and President Pervez Musharraf’s move to file the reference.
The same bench has clubbed all petitions moved on the subject by the Adliya Bachao Committee through Dr Farooq Hassan, Jameel Ahmed, Mohammad Rafi Siddiqui and Advocate Mujeeb Pirzada. Petitions filed by the Pakistan Bar Council and the Supreme Court Bar Association will be fixed before the same bench.
As usual, various political parties and a large number of lawyers will hold anti-president and anti-government rallies outside the Supreme Court building in protest against what they call an assault on the independence of judiciary.
The PBC has planned a one-hour token strike daily and boycott of court proceedings on days of the reference against the suspended chief justice.
In his petition, Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry has raised as many as 132 questions, including the competence of the SJC to try the Chief Justice of Pakistan, constitution of the council without the CJP, personal bias and prospects of advancement of some of the members of the council, alleged mala fide and collateral purpose of the referring authority and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, the haste with which the referring authority (the president) acted against the CJP, illegal suspension and forced leave, illegal assumption of office by the acting chief justice, executive assault on the independence of judiciary and proceedings in camera.
The defence team headed by Aitzaz Ahsan includes Ali Ahmed Kurd, Hamid Khan, Qazi Mohammad Anwar, Munir A. Malik and Tariq Mehmood.
