ISLAMABAD: Former Islamabad High Court (IHC) judge Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri moved the Federal Constitutional Court on Monday against his removal from the IHC.
He was removed as an IHC judge in December last year by President Asif Ali Zardari in compliance with an IHC order, which declared that his elevation to the court was “without lawful authority”.
A division bench comprising IHC Chief Justice Sardar Muhammad Sarfraz Dogar and Justice Muhammad Azam Khan had announced the verdict on a plea challenging the validity of Jahangiri’s law degree and, by extension, his appointment as a high court judge.
The plea was filed by a lawyer, Mian Dawood, who has been named as one of the respondents in Jahangiri’s petition filed today. Apart from Dawood, the federation of Pakistan, president of Pakistan, Judicial Commission of Pakistan, parliamentary committee (defunct) for the appointment of judges to superior courts, Higher Education Commission and University of Karachi have also been nominated as respondents in Jahangiri’s petition.
The petition, seen by media, contended that an “orchestrated campaign” against Jahangiri had culminated in the removal of a constitutionally appointed high court judge through a writ of quo warranto passed by his own court.
But, it continued, the development was not a “personal trragedy” for Jahangiri.
“He is satisfied with the public service he has rendered and his adherence to the dictates of his conscience and his constitutional oath,” the plea said, adding that the development, however, was “a mortal blow to the independence of judiciary as enshrined in the very preamble and Articles 2-A, 37 and 175 of the Constitution”.
If not remedied, it “shall surely serve as a grim lesson for serving and future judges”, the plea stated.
More to follow
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