The Supreme Court on Thursday granted three weeks to Auditor General for Pakistan to audit the expenditure of 'secret' fund, which had been used on 282 journalists. A three-judge bench of Justice Jawwad S Khawaja was hearing identical petitions filed by two journalists for the formation of a media commission.
During the hearing of petitions, the counsel for two women journalists, Asma Jahangir contended that the Supreme Court was defaming the media persons by putting their names on its website. She contended her clients' names were mentioned in the list of the 282 journalists, who received an amount of Rs 1,77,988,450 payments and visited foreign countries from the secret fund of the information ministry.
Ms Jahangir apprised the bench that the apex court website was not a gossip column as her clients did not visit any foreign country but their names were included in the list, "which is available in the apex court's website." Advancing arguments about Article 19-A of the constitution, Asma questioned why the Supreme Court was not putting the names of over 7500 death penalty prisoners rather than mentioning the names of journalists on its website.
"Why the Supreme Court is not putting the details of its accounts expenditure on its website and why it is not sending its register before Public Account Committee (PAC) for the scrutiny of its accounts," she also asked. On the other hand, Justice Khilji Arif Hussain made it clear that they did not observe that journalists, whose names were mentioned in the list, had done anything wrong.
Regarding the list 'B' in respect of items on which privilege/secrecy was claimed, Justice Khilji revealed that the name of any journalist was not mentioned in list B. It is to be noted that the list 'B' contains 174 items on which a sum of Rs 8, 68, 13,633/- has been spent.
Justice Jawwad S Khawaja also observed that the court had made the list 'A' public after having it certified by the secretary ministry of information. He said the court's objective was only that people should be aware that where their money was being used. He also said that judges were not 'secret cow' as they were also in the public domain; therefore, people could raise figures on them if they were involved in any irregularities.
During the proceedings, while a woman anchorperson of a private television reached the rostrum, Justice Khawaja stopped her by pointing out that it was not a 'talk show' and that she should wait for her turn. Later, she requested the bench to remove her name from its website, but the court rejected her plea. It, however, issued notices to Information Ministry, Attorney General for Pakistan and petitioners Hamid Mir and Absar Alam over several journalists' petitions against publication of list containing names of 282 journalists, who had allegedly benefited from the secret fund. The AGP, Irfan Qadir, told the bench that he was asked by the information ministry to defend it by claiming privilege on the list 'B'. The hearing of case was adjourned till May 2.