President Asif Ali Zardari has accepted the resignations of Supreme Court judges Mansoor Ali Shah and Athar Minallah, a post on the President’s official X account said on Friday.
The two judges had handed in their resignations yesterday, hours after the contentious 27th Constitutional Amendment was signed into law by the president, describing the legislation as an affront to the judiciary and the 1973 Constitution.
“I therefore resign as the senior-most judge of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, in full awareness of the reasons that compel it and in loyalty to the Constitution that has guided every step of my judicial life,” Justice Shah wrote in his 13-page resignation letter, issued in both English and Urdu. The letters were addressed to the president.
Justice Shah had described the amendment as a “grave assault on the Constitution” and said the 27th Amendment dismantled the Supreme Court of Pakistan, subjugated the judiciary to executive control and struck at the “very heart of our constitutional democracy”.
The amendment, he said, made justice “more distant, more fragile and more vulnerable to power”.
Justice Minallah, in his resignation letter, had regretted that the Constitution he had sworn to uphold and defend was “no more”.
“Much as I have tried to convince myself otherwise, I can think of no greater assault on its memory than to pretend that as new foundations are now laid, they rest upon anything other than its grave,” he bemoaned.
Both judges had recently written to Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Yahya Afridi, requesting a full court meeting to consider the amendment.
There was no discussion on the 27th Amendment in today’s full court meeting called by CJP Afridi, according to a Supreme Court (SC) press release, which also said that the meeting gave its final approval to the SC Rules, 2025.
Defence Minister Khawaja Asif criticised the two Supreme Court judges today for tendering their resignations, saying their “consciences only awakened after their monopoly was curtailed”.
