The Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) has been requested to provide findings/orders of the 398 references disposed of by it. The SJC on 15th June, 2019 issued a press release showing the number of references pending before it is 28, while 398 references have been disposed of.
Senior advocate Abid Hassan Minto on Saturday wrote a letter to the Secretary SJC expressing concern over filing and hearing of references against Justice Qazi Faez Isa on priority basis. He raised many questions in his letter which included: "Since the Constitution does not make any distinction regarding the treatment of information received from the President or through any other source, what are the reasons for taking up the references against Justice Faez Isa and Justice KK Agha in preference to the other pending matters before the council? Have any proceedings at all been taken to date in the other pending references?
"Are there any references pending before the SJC that relate to any of the honourable judges that presently sit in the SJC, and if so, is it proper for those honourable judges to sit in the council until the references regarding them are first decided? If there are no reasons to take up the matters pertaining to Justices Isa and Agha out of turn, then does not doing so indicate bias, disentitling the presently constituted council to continue its proceedings against the said judges?
"Would the bias indicated in the preceding question (4) itself not constitute misconduct and if so, should this matter not first be decided by a reconstituted council in respect of each of its present members?"
Abid Hassan wrote that the SJC statement gave no other information about any of the references - whether pending or disposed of - except that "all the (pending) cases are in process and shall be disposed of in due course of time". He said it appears the council claims (apparently by virtue of Rule 13 (1) & amp (3) of the SJC Procedure of Inquiry 2005) confidentiality for these matters.
Although the Procedure of Inquiry appears to be ultra vires, even if it is not, one would think that if confidentiality may be claimed, it should be allowed to be claimed only by the judge under inquiry, and that too in certain circumstances.
"But I do not ask for a breach of any confidentiality. I do, however, note that even the rules of the council do not accord any confidentiality to the "findings" through which a reference is disposed of."
"If for some reason the council thinks that it must refuse me access to even the "findings", then I request that, at the very least, it kindly provide a response to the following specific question: of the disposed of cases, how many were actually decided and in how many were the judges allowed to retire along with benefits of retirement?"
Minto stated that it would be odd to refuse access to the said findings/decisions considering the finding/decision in Justice Shaukat Siddiqui's case which was uploaded on the website of the Supreme Court. "These questions do not have anything to do with the proceedings of a matter before the council and hence are not covered by Rule 13. Again, all applicable fees and expenses, as advised, will be happily borne by me," he said.
He asked the secretary SJC, who is Registrar of the Supreme Court, to kindly forward this letter to the council members for their kind consideration and provide him with a response at the earliest.