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CJ changes schedule of hearing petition against PCO

RECORDER REPORT

ISLAMABAD: The schedule of hearings for the pending petitions on the validity of the Proclamation of Emergency and Provisional Constitutional Order of 1999 was changed by Chief Justice Irshad Hassan Khan.

The case will be taken up after the Republic Day and next day being Friday, will only be heard for two hours and then adjourned till April 10 allowing the judges to dispose of other cases.

Since the Pakistan Muslim League rested its case on Wednesday, the next petition on the cause list is of Wahab al-Khairi of the Al-Jehad Trust, he was asked by the Chief Justice to come prepared to open his petition on Friday.

Chief Justice Khan urged him and thereby other counsel in the queue to confine themselves to legal arguments without repeating what their peers have already discussed and avoid "personal references".

The Chief Justice described the case of important nature and said they wanted to hear all the petitioners and that is why they had asked for a day-to-day hearing but now they feel other cases should also be heard and disposed of while the Court was seized with the PCO cases.

Hence the full court will after Friday revert to the division and full benches for two weeks starting from March 27 and hear pending cases until April 7.

As the Chief Justice said after Wahab Khairi, the Court will take up the petitions of Moulvi Iqbal Haider of MWM, retired Deputy Inspector General of the Police and now a Supreme Court lawyer, Fazal Ellahi Siddiqui, another advocate Syed Imtiaz Hussain Bukhari and a free-lance journalist, Shahid Orakzai.

Before the Court rose for the day, Khairi submitted eight point formulations of his petition that according to a brief explanation in the cause list seeks restoration of the Constitution to the extent of the judiciary.