The Islamabad High Court (IHC) declared on Tuesday a petition seeking the verification of Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri’s degree maintainable and sought a reply from the judge on the matter within three days.
The petition questioning the legitimacy of the LLB degree of the IHC judge and seeking a judicial determination on whether he lawfully held office as a high court judge was filed by lawyer Mian Daud. The court had reserved its decision on the maintainability of the plea in July last year.
The case against Justice Jahangiri centres on a letter that began circulating last year on social media, purportedly from the University of Karachi’s controller of examinations, regarding the judge’s law degree.
A two-member IHC bench, comprising Chief Justice Sardar Muhammad Sarfraz Dogar and Justice Muhammad Azam Khan, issued the verdict today after hearing arguments on the matter.
During the hearing, Ahmed Hassan Shah, who was representing the District Bar Association, contended that the matter should be referred to the Islamabad Bar Council (IBC), which issues licences to lawyers. He also argued that allegations of misconduct against any judge fell under Article 209 of the Constitution, which covers the subject of the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC).
At that, CJ Dogar observed that the case did not pertain to misconduct but the eligibility of a judge to hold office.
However, the lawyer insisted that the SJC — the top forum for judicial accountability that probes allegations of misconduct against judges — was the right forum for the matter.
He further argued that Article 199 — the constitutional provision that deals with the jurisdiction of the high court and under which Daud’s plea was filed — should not be invoked where Article 209 could apply.
The lawyer argued that the “judges cannot proceed against one another”.
“The court cannot exercise its jurisdiction under Article 199 in competing circumstances,” he argued.
While presenting his arguments, Aleem Abbasi, who was representing the IBC, contended that while Article 209 could be applied in various matters, a “new trend” seemed to be emerging.
He said that Justice Jahangiri held three licences, and the matter of his qualification needed to be addressed by a competent authority.
Abbasi reminded the court that an intra-court appeal was pending — seemingly a reference to a plea filed in the Federal Constitutional Court by five IHC judges, including Justice Jahangiri — and the appointment of one of the judges hearing the case had previously been questioned.
“Your lordship may help him if a judge is being arm-twisted,” he further remarked.
For his part, amicus curiae Barrister Zafarullah Khan raised questions regarding the maintainability of the plea. He also raised the question whether the case should proceed under Article 209 or Article 199.
Highlighting that the case concerned the “integrity of a judge”, he noted that sub-clause 5 of Article 199 excluded courts and sub-clause 3 excluded the armed forces.
Moreover, he pointed out that the Supreme Court (SC) had also previously dealt with the matter at hand.
At that, CJ Dogar remarked that the SC had directed the IHC to proceed with the plea. He also observed that a writ of quo warranto could be issued against a judge.
The term quo warranto refers to legal action requiring a person to show by what warrant an office is held.
During the hearing today, Advocate General Ayaz Shaukat read out a report by the University of Karachi.
At the previous hearing, the Higher Education Commission (HEC), in its detailed report submitted to the IHC, had endorsed KU’s findings that the LLB degree of Justice Jahangiri was obtained through unfair means.
In its submission, the HEC enclosed KU’s inquiry report that revealed glaring discrepancies in the judge’s academic record.
Reading the report today, the advocate general said Justice Jahangiri had been debarred from appearing in an LLB exam for three years in 1988, but he still sat an exam under a different name.
At that, Abbasi argued that the Sindh High Court had suspended the KU notification cancelling the judge’s degree.
CJ Dogar, however, observed that the degree had not been restored.
The court then declared the plea questioning the legitimacy of the judge’s law degree maintainable and issued notices to the respondents, directing them to submit their replies within three days.
KU inquiry report
The KU’s report stated that candidate ‘Tariq Mehmood’ obtained an LLB degree in 1991 under enrolment number 5968, but records showed that another student, Imtiaz Ahmed, had been enrolled under the same number in 1987, while the transcript for LLB Part-I was issued in the name of ‘Tariq Jahangiri’.
The report added the judge had also enrolled for LLB Part-I under a second enrolment number, 7124 — a violation of the university’s rules, which permit only one enrolment number for the entire duration of a degree programme.
The inquiry committee refrained from labelling the degree as ‘bogus’, but it declared the credentials invalid on account of multiple identities and conflicting enrolment records.
The KU alleged the judge “used and appeared in LLB examinations on false identities having different enrolment numbers of Karachi University in collusion with university staff”. It further stated that he had “personified different other regular/ex-regular students of Islamia College, i.e., Mohammad Naeemuddin, son of Mohammad Moinuddin, and Imtiaz Ahmed.”
As a result, the university declared the candidate guilty of using unfair means, cancelled the result, and imposed a three-year ban, allowing him to reappear in examinations in 1992.
Protracted legal trajectory
The controversy around Justice Jahangiri’s law degree has followed a protracted legal trajectory since Sept 16, when the same IHC division bench first took up the petition and issued an interim order restraining Justice Jahangiri from performing judicial functions until the maintainability of the petition could be decided.
The decision, made without issuing prior notice to the judge, had sparked debate within the legal community over whether a high court could suspend a sitting judge through an interim order. On Sept 29, the SC intervened, setting aside the restraining order.
A five-member constitutional bench, headed by Justice Aminuddin Khan, held that a high court could not bar a judge from performing judicial functions while hearing a quo warranto petition.
The ruling clarified that it addressed only the legality of the interim order and not the merits of the allegations. The SC later directed the IHC to decide all preliminary objections and proceed with the matter in accordance with law.
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