ISLAMABAD: The federal government on Thursday challenged the Supreme Court registrar office’s decision to decline to entertain an unheard-of legal remedy — curative review petition — in the Justice Qazi Faez Isa case by moving chamber appeals.

Earlier, the SC registrar office had returned a set of nine curative review petitions on the grounds that the petitions contained scandalous language; besides, under the law a second review petition could not be filed to challenge a decision on a review petition and the petitions contained many other deficiencies.

An informed source told Dawn that the 175-page appeals had been filed before the institution branch of the Supreme Court in which objections had been raised to the registrar office’s decision to return the government’s curative review petitions.

According to the Supreme Court Rules 1980, an appeal to challenge the decision of the registrar office is taken up in his chambers by a judge designated by the chief justice of Pakistan, who either accepts the appeal or refers it to a three-judge SC bench which finally decides whether the appeal should be fixed for hearing or not.

The source said that the registrar office granted two weeks to the government to complete the paperwork since 90 paper books (copies of nine appeals for each of 10 judges who had heard the original review petitions) each consisting of 175 pages had to be filed. The government will try its best to complete the paperwork within 15 days.

Moreover, notices were issued to the respondents and parties involved in the case, including Justice Isa, since it is a requirement under the rules to inform the parties about the institution of an appeal or a case.

Earlier, one of the objections in the May 25 registrar office decision was that no proper notices had been issued to the respondents while filing the petitions and hence time could not be granted and the case in its original form was being returned for not being entertainable.

The set of appeals was moved on June 24 since the curative review petitions were filed on May 24 and, according to the rules, any appeal to challenge a decision of the registrar office has to be filed with 30 days.

On May 24, the government had filed the curative review petitions against the April 26, 2021 majority order on the review petitions filed by Justice Isa and others.

Subsequently, on May 25, the registrar office returned the curative review petitions while ruling that the federation had misconceived the Supreme Court Rules 1980 while moving the petitions.

In its order, the institution branch of the Supreme Court explained that curative review petition was an application which provided information to initiate suo motu proceedings under Articles 184(3), 187, 188 and 189 of the Constitution, read with Order 26 and Order 33 of the Supreme Court Rules.

But the present case amounts to a second review petition and, therefore, it is not entertainable under Order 36, Rule 9 of the Supreme Court Rules, which states that after final disposal of the first application for review, no subsequent application for review would lie to the court and consequently would not be entertained by the registry.

The registrar office pointed out that “Suo Motu case” had been written on the title page of the petitions but in the subject they were described as curative review petitions.

Moreover, scandalous language was used at least on five different occasion in various pages of the petitions. Besides, the prayer clause was not properly drawn because in the Supreme Court Rules there was no provision to recall, revisit or revise its judgements, and that multifarious prayers had been made in the petitions, the registrar office said in its order.

Published in Dawn, June 25th, 2021