ISLAMABAD: Sarina Isa, the wife of Justice Qazi Faez Isa of the Supreme Court, on Tuesday personally submitted an application to the SC registrar with a request to include all the judges in the full court who had earlier decided her husband’s petition against the filing of a presidential reference and issued a short order on June 19.

“I am confident when this injustice is brought to the attention of the Honourable Chief Justice, for whom I have great respect and regard, he will direct you [registrar] not to exclude Justice Maqbool Baqar, Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and Justice Yahya Afridi [who wrote dissenting notes in the judgement] from the bench hearing my review,” she said in the one-page application.

Ms Isa, who was walking with a stick when she entered the court premises from the public entrance, however, avoided talking to the media.

Justices Maqbool Baqar, Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and Yahya Afridi dissented from SC judgement in Isa reference

“My children and I were not parties in any of the cases [constitution petitions against the filing of the presidential reference], yet are mentioned a total of 194 times in the judgements authored by Justice Umar Ata Bandial (81 times), Justice Maqbool Baqar (39 times), Justice Faisal Arab (seven times), Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah (54 times) and Justice Yahya Afridi (13 times),” she said in the application.

On Oct 28, a seven-judge full court consisting of Justice Umar Ata Bandial, Justice Manzoor Ahmed Malik, Justice Faisal Arab, Justice Mazhar Alam Miankhel, Justice Sajjad Ali Shah, Justice Muneeb Akhtar and Justice Qazi Muhammad Amin had postponed the hearing to Nov 16 after accepting a joint one-page application moved on behalf of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Quetta Bar Association president Muhammad Asif Reki, Punjab Bar Council vice chairman Shahnawaz Ismail and the Balochistan Bar Council vice chairman.

They had requested the bench to postpone the Oct 28 proceedings and place the matter before Chief Justice of Pakistan Gulzar Ahmed to form a larger bench consisting of all the judges who had earlier heard and decided the constitutional petitions against the filing of the presidential reference against Justice Isa.

In her application, Ms Isa highlighted that she was not heard by the judges [bench] which made it all the more necessary that her review petition was heard by all of them. “I believe this right the Constitution grants to me (Article 188) and the Supreme Court rules confirm it,” she said.

The application said that if three judges were excluded, her rights would be violated, adding that the chief justice, through the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC), was a party and oath of office and the code of conduct required complete impartiality.

The application recalled that the SJC was a respondent in the petitions in which review application by her had been filed, adding that the chief justice was a member of the SJC and now by virtue of his office was its chairman.

The review petitions, including of Justice Isa and his wife, sought to revisit paragraphs 3 to 11, arguing that the directives/observations or contents of these paragraphs in the June 19 short order were unnecessary, superfluous, contradictory, excessive and unlawful and thus liable to be reviewed and deleted since they constituted mistake and error apparent on the face of the record.

The seven judges through paragraphs 3 to 11 in the short order had quashed the reference but ordered the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) chairman to furnish a report to the SJC secretary containing details of the proceedings conducted by the Inland Revenue commissioner after seeking explanation from the wife and children of Justice Isa about the nature and source of the funds for the three properties in the United Kingdom.

On the receipt of the report, the SJC may determine to initiate any action/proceedings for the purposes of Article 209 of the Constitution in its suo motu jurisdiction, the judgement had explained.

In her review petition, Ms Isa had contended that her tax affairs or of any private citizen were confidential, adding that the tax affairs of a private citizen neither impinged on the fundamental rights of other citizens nor were a matter of public importance. The order essentially directed investigation into the tax liability of private citizens under the garb of public importance, the petition argued, adding that this did not satisfy the requisite preconditions of breach of the fundamental rights and public importance that triggered Article 184(3) powers vested in the Supreme Court.

The review petition argued that the terms offshore assets and offshore evader were introduced for the first time by the Finance Act, 2019, published on June 30, 2019.

The petitioner said she had declared the three offshore properties in her tax returns for the years 2018 and 2019 after the change of law requiring them to be so declared and had till date not received a single notice in respect of either tax year or in respect of her returns, let alone that she did not declare or under-declare or provided inaccurate particulars.

Published in Dawn, November 11th, 2020