Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Umar Ata Bandial should step down, the country’s government demanded on Friday, questioning his impartiality.
The demand was put forward by information and broadcasting minister Marriyum Aurangzeb in a press conference following a meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) in Islamabad.
The Chief Justice has now become controversial and should resign, said the minister.
The crisis persists as the demand comes a day after the National Assembly passed a resolution rejecting a three-member Supreme Court bench’s “minority” verdict on the Punjab province elections and made it binding on Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his cabinet to not implement the ruling.
Justice Athar Minallah of the Supreme Court (SC) on Friday released his detailed note on the suo motu notice proceedings on the delay in holding polls in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab provinces, saying that the case was dismissed 4-3.
Justice Minallah was among the judges who rejected the suo motu notice taken by the CJP regarding the delay in polls on the advice of an SC bench hearing the Ghulam Mehmood Dogar case.
CJP Bandial had formed a nine-member bench to hear the suo motu case. However, two of the nine judges recused themselves, while four — Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail, Justice Yahya Afridi, and Justice Minallah — had dismissed the case.
In the note, Justice Minallah reiterated that the “manner and mode” in which these proceedings were initiated had “unnecessarily” exposed the court to political controversies.
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