Justice Isa inquired about the provisions that make a “special” bench special,

A senior SC coroner sought to decide why certain cases were treated more urgently than others.

Previously, a three-judge special bench was constituted by CJP Umar Ata Bandial, with Justice Isa as its head, to preside over a suo motu case about allocating 20 extra marks to a Hafiz-e-Quran student during admission into an MBBS/BDS program. Justice Yahya Afridi and Justice Shahid Waheed are the other two members of this bench.

Last year, the suo motu case was assigned a reference number, with the special bench tasked to assess its compliance with the MBBS and BDS (Admission, House Job, and Internship) Regulations 2018.

It is worth noting that this marked the first time Justice Isa was appointed to a special bench hearing a suo motu case.

Furthermore, in January of the same year, during a hearing on another matter, a bench headed by Justice Isa raised concerns about awarding additional marks to Hafiz-e-Quran students.

This prompted senior lawyers to question the suitability of a judge who had already expressed an opinion on a particular issue presiding over a suo motu case involving the same matter. Subsequently, following the release of the cause list, legal experts began debating whether the winds of change were starting to blow in the apex court, or at least a slight breeze, as questions were raised over the exclusion of two senior judges, Justice Isa and Justice Sardar Tariq Masood, from special or larger benches handling constitutional and politically sensitive high-profile cases.

There is a widely held belief that certain judges have been consistently appointed to preside over politically sensitive cases for the past five years while others have been overlooked. This issue was further compounded by Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah’s comments in a separate case, which added to the contouring of the proceedings held on Wednesday. Justice Isa raised doubts over the constitutionality of special benches in the Supreme Court Rules.

He questioned the concept of special benches, noting that the three judges assigned to the bench had been sitting on different benches in the morning. He further expressed concern that the formation of special benches would lead to “misgivings” and criticism of the apex court.

The Attorney General for Pakistan, Shehzad Ata Elahi, acknowledged that there were precedents for the formation of special benches but requested more time to assist the court on the matter.

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Justice Isa also questioned why the issue of granting 20 additional points to a student had taken 14 months to be addressed. He expressed deep concern over the lack of accountability of the Supreme Court, urging that “utmost caution” must be exercised. Poverty.

Justice Isa questioned the fairness of the process, asking, “What is the due process” if one case is scheduled for hearing the very next day after being filed while another is listed after several months of delay?

The SC judge also expressed reservations about the ban on criticizing state institutions, particularly the conduct of superior courts by the country’s media regulatory body (PEMRA).

“Why should my conduct not be discussed if I do something     wrong?” he said, “does PEMRA want to create a police state?”

He also asked what the term ‘state institutions’ even meant.

“The Federal Shariat Court could even declare the PEMRA orders unIslamic,” he remarked.