Justice Jahangiri moves SC for hearing of plea against bar on judicial work

ISLAMABAD: 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. Monitoring Desk