Five judges of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Friday submitted separate but identical petitions in the Supreme Court seeking rulings curbing the administrative powers of the chief justice, including the constitution of benches and transfer of cases.
Justices Mohsin Akhtar Kayani, Babar Sattar, Tariq Mahmood Jahangiri, Saman Rifat and Ejaz Ishaq Khan visited the apex court in person to submit their petitions. In the petitions, the judges have said they are being threatened with “retribution” for exercising their judicial authority in cases that “powerful members of the Executive” found disagreeable. “This petition is a desperate measure of the last resort,” state all the petitions.
The petitions are seeking a declaration that administrative powers cannot be “deployed to undermine or trump the judicial powers” of high court judges. Additionally, they have urged the apex court to declare that a chief justice of the high court is not “authorized to constitute benches or transfer cases” once a high court bench had been assigned a case or exclude available judges from the roster, preventing them from performing judicial functions.
The petitions also seek a declaration “that the constitution of benches, transfer of cases and issuance of roster can only be done in accordance with the rules adopted by the entirety of the High Court under Article 202 [rules of procedure], read with Article 192(1) [constitution of high court] of the Constitution.”
The five judges are seeking a declaration that the “master of the roster” concept has been set aside by Supreme Court rulings and the chief justice cannot solely decide on constituting benches, transferring cases, or issuing roster.
The petitions further sought the declaration that formation of IHC’s administrative committees through notifications dated Feb. 3 and July 15 and all the actions taken by them “suffer from mala fide in law and are illegal.” They asked the court to set aside these notifications, and all actions taken by the administrative committees constituted under them, for “being illegal and coram non judice,” including the adoption and approval of the Islamabad High Court Practice and Procedure Rules, 2025.
The judges further stated in their petitions that the apex court “direct the IHC to provide effective supervision and oversight” over the functioning of the district judiciary, as mandated by the Constitution under Article 203, which states that each high court shall supervise and control all courts subordinate to it.
Questions of law
The five judges’ petitions also placed several questions of law before the apex court. They questioned if the chief justice’s “excessive administrative control” violated the principle of horizontal independence of judiciary. Similarly, they questioned if the chief justice retained powers that allowed him to constitute benches in a manner that renders the judges of the high court dysfunctional.
Further, the petitions questioned if the chief justice had exceeded his powers by transferring cases, mid-proceedings, between benches, and whether the “master of the roster” doctrine was permissible under law.
They questioned whether the “bureaucratization” of the IHC was in violation of the Constitution and law and whether the bar on Justice Jahangiri from exercising judicial duties pending the results of a Supreme Judicial Council reference was in accordance with precedent establishing by Supreme Court rulings.