Supreme Court Justices Mansoor Ali Shah and Athar Minallah handed in their resignations, hours after the contentious 27th Constitutional Amendment was signed into law by President Asif Ali Zardari on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Both judges had called on Chief Justice of Pakistan Yahya Afridi in separate letters to summon a full court meeting and judicial conference to hold a debate on the 27th Constitutional Amendment.<\/p>\n
In his letter to the president today, Justice Shah assailed the amendment as \u201ca grave assault on the Constitution of Pakistan\u201d, which \u201cdismantles the Supreme Court of Pakistan, subjugates the judiciary to executive control, and strikes at the very heart of our constitutional democracy\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy fracturing the unity of the nation\u2019s apex court, it has crippled judicial independence and integrity, pushing the country back by decades,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs history bears witness, such a disfigurement of the constitutional order is unsustainable and will, in time, be reversed – but not before leaving deep institutional scars.\u201d<\/p>\n
The judge stated that he had a choice between serving as an SC justice, which he said \u201cundermines the very foundation of the institution one has sworn to protect\u201d, or hand in his resignation.<\/p>\n
\u201cStaying on would not only amount to silent acquiescence in a constitutional wrong, but would also mean continuing to sit in a court whose constitutional voice has been muted,\u201d Justice Shah wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnlike the 26th Amendment \u2014 when the Supreme Court of Pakistan still retained the jurisdiction to examine and answer the constitutional questions \u2014 the present amendment has stripped this court of that fundamental and critical jurisdiction and authority.<\/p>\n
\u201cServing in such a truncated and diminished court, I cannot protect the Constitution, nor can I even judicially examine the amendment that has disfigured it,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, Justice Minallah stated in his letter that when he took the oath of office 11 years ago, he swore to uphold not \u201ca constitution\u201d but \u201cthe Constitution\u201d.<\/p>\n
He wrote: \u201cPrior to the passage of the 27th Amendment, I wrote to the Chief Justice of Pakistan, expressing concern over what its proposed features meant for our constitutional order.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need not reproduce the detailed contents of that letter, but suffice it to say that, against a canvas of selective silence and inaction, those fears have now come to be,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Justice Minallah regretted that the Constitution he swore to uphold was \u201cno more\u201d, adding that he \u201ccan 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\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is left of it is a mere shadow; one that breathes neither its spirit, nor speaks the words of the people to whom it belongs,\u201d the judge wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese robes we wear are more than mere ornaments. They are to serve as a reminder of that most noble trust bestowed upon those fortunate enough to don them,\u201d the letter read. \u201cInstead, throughout our history, they have too often stood as symbols of betrayal through silence and complicity alike.\u201d<\/p>\n
Justice Minallah is the eldest son of Nasrum Minallah, who was a commissioner during the 1960s and 70s. He is the son-in-law of Justice Safdar Shah, who was part of the bench that convicted and sentenced former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto but wrote a dissenting note against the conviction, for which he faced the wrath of the then-military dictator, General Ziaul Haq.<\/p>\n
He joined Pakistan Customs and rose to senior positions, but later resigned and started practising law. Following the sacking of former chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, he joined the lawyers\u2019 movement for the restoration of the judiciary.<\/p>\n
However, after Justice Chaudhry\u2019s restoration, he became a critic of the judiciary because of excessive suo motu cases, which led to the pendency of routine cases.<\/p>\n
In November 2022, then-CJP Umar Ata Bandial administered the oath to Justice Minallah, Justice Shahid Waheed and Justice Syed Hasan Azhar Rizvi as the judges of the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
Earlier in the evening, sources told Dawn that the president was expected to administer the oath to the chief justice of the Federal Constitutional Court \u2014 the establishment of which would now be realised after the enactment of the 27th Amendment bill \u2014 tomorrow at the Presidency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Supreme Court Justices Mansoor Ali Shah and Athar Minallah handed in their resignations, hours after the contentious 27th Constitutional Amendment was signed into law by President Asif Ali Zardari on Thursday. Both judges had called on Chief Justice of Pakistan Yahya Afridi in separate letters to summon a full court meeting and judicial conference to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13401,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-court-and-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13400"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13402,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13400\/revisions\/13402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}