The Supreme Court on Monday will resume the hearing on the petition of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry challenging a reference against him, composition of the SJC and its competence to try the Chief Justice.
A 13-member full court of the Supreme Court headed by Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman Ramday will take up the petition. Earlier, the government lawyer Malik Mohammed Qayyum had offered that the Supreme Court could look into the reference against the Chief Justice.
"I am under instructions from the highest quarter to place the material before the Supreme Court for adjudication," Advocate Malik Qayyum, representing the federal government, told the bench.
However, the bench said it would first decide if it had the jurisdiction to hear the reference. In earlier arguments, the government lawyers had insisted that the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) had the exclusive jurisdiction to decide a reference against a judge.
Qayyum, referring to the petitioner's objections on the composition of the SJC and their insistence that the reference could not be filed against a Chief Justice, asked what the government could do. "We want the matter (reference) be investigated.