ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court will take up next week the review petitions filed by ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif, his family and Finance Minister Ishaq Dar.

As per the list of cases scheduled to be taken up next week, a three-member bench of the apex court comprising Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan, Justice Azmat Saeed and Justice Ijazul Ahsan will hear on Sept 12 the petitions filed by Mr Sharif seeking a review of the SC’s July 28 verdict which, besides removing him from the office of PM, also directed the National Accountability Bureau to file four references against Mr Sharif and his children.

The ex-PM’s children — Maryam, Hussain and Hassan Nawaz — and his son-in-law retired Captain Mohammad Safdar had separately filed review petitions against the judgement.

Even though the July 28 verdict was signed by five judges of the apex court, as per the cause list issued by the registrar office, Justice Asif Saeed Khosa and Justice Gulzar Ahmed have not been included in the bench that will hear the review petitions.

According to a senior law officer of the federal government, this is because neither Mr Sharif nor any of his family members had challenged the dissenting notes of Justice Khosa or Justice Ahmed within the stipulated time frame.

Three-judge bench will hear petitions

However, since the two judges were also signatories to the July 28 verdict, the law officer said it was a complicated matter on which he could not comment.

The counsel for Mr Sharif, Khawaja Haris Ahmed, said that the apex court had issued two judgements on July 28 — one which was signed by three members of the bench, and another which was signed by five members of the bench.

“Mr Sharif has challenged both judgements, but the registrar’s office did not fix the review petition against the judgement of five members,” he said, adding that the review petition against the three-member bench had been fixed before the same bench which had monitored the progress of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) constituted to probe the allegations against the Sharif family.

Mr Sharif’s review petition had contended that his unceremonious disqualification under Article 62(1)(f) of the Constitution could not have been invoked without conducting a regular trial. It further objected to the fact that five members of the bench had signed the July 28 verdict, even though only three judges had examined the JIT report.

It added that the order to protect the tenure of service of the JIT members and not take any adverse action against them without informing Justice Ijaz-ul-Ahsan — the Supreme Court monitoring judge assigned to oversee the filing of references by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) — had violated Article 175(2) of the Constitution, as well as the principle of separation of powers.

Earlier this week, an apex court bench, headed by Justice Dost Mohammad Khan, had expressed displeasure over the performance of Irfan Naeem Mangi, the director general of Balochistan NAB, but regretted the court’s inability to proceed against him since another bench had passed the order for the protection of the tenure of members of the Panama JIT. Mr Mangi was a member of that JIT.

The review petitions filed by Maryam Nawaz, Hussain Nawaz, Hassan Nawaz and Capt Safdar objected to the constitution of the JIT under the supervision of the apex court, and regretted that the manner in which the JIT had conducted its proceedings and compiled its report and the recommendations made by the court had blocked the petitioners’ access to justice in accordance with the law.

They have requested the apex court bench to review its order of appointing a supervisory judge of the SC to oversee NAB’s proceedings as well as the accountability court, terming it a denial of justice because the arrangement was inimical to the separation of powers envisaged by the Constitution.

In his review petition, Ishaq Dar pointed out that the only allegation against him was based on his ‘confession’ recorded on April 20, 2000 in the Hudaibia Paper Mills reference while he was in NAB’s custody. He contended that no such allegation had been levelled against him in that case. Moreover, he said, the SC had not given the six-member JIT any directive to investigate him. He alleged that the team had evidently gone above and beyond its mandate. However, the petition added, the court had erred by issuing the directive, which prima facie was an error on the face of the record.

Published in Dawn, September 9th, 2017