IHC’s Justice Jahangiri moves SC for early hearing of plea against bar on judicial work

Islamabad High Court’s (IHC) Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri has approached the Supreme Court for an early hearing of his plea challenging the September 16 restraining order^[1] that barred him from performing judicial functions after a divisional IHC bench raised serious questions about the validity of his law degree from Karachi University (KU), it emerged on Tuesday.

A complaint^[2] pertaining to Justice Jahangiri’s allegedly fake degree was submitted to the Supreme Judicial Council last year in July while a petition challenging his appointment was filed in the IHC earlier this year. The matter centres on a letter^[3] that began circulating last year on social media, purportedly from KU’s controller of examinations, regarding the judge’s law degree.

In an extraordinary development last week, the IHC had restrained Justice Jahangiri from exercising his judicial powers as a two-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Mohammad Sarfraz Dogar and comprising Justice Mohammad Azam Khan, issued the interim order while hearing a writ petition filed by lawyer Mian Dawood under Article 199 of the Constitution. Justice Jahangiri challenged^[4] the decision in the SC last Friday in person, pleading for the restraining order to be set aside and suspended during the pendency of the petition, and for the division bench to be directed to hold back from proceeding further.

The judge subsequently filed an application, a copy of which is available with Dawn.com, for an early hearing a day ago through Advocate Syed Rifaqat Hussain Shah.

The application said the judge was restrained from performing his judicial functions and could not dispense justice, despite the “settled position” in law that such a restraining order could not be passed to stop a high court judge from performing his functions.

“The case concerns the important questions of law relating to the functioning of a judge of the high court and the independence of the judiciary, which are of grave concern to any jurisdiction. Hence, urgent intervention of this court is required.

“The impugned order opens the floodgates to litigation where any pending reference/complaint/petition, against any judge, can permit a high court to prevent him from performing his function. Hence, urgent intervention of this court is required to correct course and prevent such actions from straitjacketing the performance of judges of the high court,” the application said.

It argued that the impugned order was passed without considering Dawood’s bona fide, adding that the petition was not maintainable in the absence of such bona fide.

“Hence, this determination must be made at the onset to close the door to any such mala fide litigation initiated against constitutional functionaries. The crucial decision to restrain a judge from performing his function was made without even hearing the counterposition. The petitioner was never heard. Hence, it is imperative that the objections to maintainability to the petition filed against the petitioner be considered at the very onset, to prevent the litigation from unnecessarily precluding the petitioner from dispensing justice in the high court that he serves in.

“The petitioner can only serve as a judge of the high court till a particular age, and time lost due to the operation of the impugned order cannot be regained by him. Hence, this court must urgently intervene in the matter so that the petitioner can be restored and can continue to dispense justice in the high court that he serves in,” the application said.

The judge requested that his petition be fixed for a hearing this week.

The matter is only one of the controversies plaguing the IHC since five judges — namely Justices Mohsin Akhtar Kayani, Babar Sattar, Jahangiri, Saman Rafat Imtiaz and Sardar Ejaz Ishaq Khan — had submitted separate petitions^[5] at the apex court together on Friday against a number of issues affecting the court recently, from the composition of benches to rosters to case transfers.