Mansoor Ali Shah, Athar Minallah tender resignations as SC judges following 27th Amendment

ISLAMABAD: Senior puisne judge Mansoor Ali Shah and Supreme Court (SC) Justice Athar Minallah have tendered their resignations from their posts on Thursday.

Both the judges have forwarded their resignations — copies of which are available with Geo News — to President Asif Ali Zardari following the enactment of the much-touted 27th Constitutional Amendment.

The development came after the Senate approved the amendment bill following changes approved by the National Assembly a day earlier, amid noisy protests by the opposition.

Federal Minister for Law Azam Nazeer Tarar presented the constitutional amendment bill today, with the tweaks to the draft earlier approved by the upper house. The amendment bill received 64 votes (two-thirds majority in the 96-member House) in favour and four against.

The much-touted bill was initially presented in the upper house of parliament on Monday and got a nod on the same day. It was then referred to the NA, which approved it with some amendments. Therefore, the legislation was again presented in the Senate today to approve the latest changes.

In his 13-page-long resignation, Justice Shah termed the amendment as “a grave assault on the Constitution of Pakistan”, which “dismantles the Supreme Court of Pakistan, subjugates the judiciary to executive control, and strikes at the very heart of our constitutional democracy”.

“By fracturing the unity of the nation’s apex court, it has crippled judicial independence and integrity, pushing the country back by decades,” he wrote. “As 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.” Staff Report