Why Fawad Chaudhry is Taking Judiciary to Task?

In another statement challenging judicial norms, Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry raised a question on the seniority principle followed in the appointment of judges in the high judiciary.

The minister termed it ‘ridiculous’ and ‘foolish’, calling for the parliament and chief justice to get rid of the norm.

Fawad made these remarks after the strike of the Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) on the appointment of Justice Mohammad Ali Mazhar of Sindh High Court (SHC) in the Supreme Court (SC).

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The Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) had also expressed reservations on the elevation of a ‘junior judge’ in the top court.

The judge is currently fifth in the seniority list of the high court.

The information minister opined that not seniority but competence should be the measure of promotion of the judge.

Fawad Chaudhry has targeted the judicial norms and activism for quite some time, even when he was the science and technology minister.

Hinting at Supreme Court (SC) judge Justice Qazi Faez Isa without mentioning the name, the information minister said in March that the judge should resign from the post and contest in councilor election if he likes to do politics.

Fawad had also called him an ‘under trial’ judge.

The analysts say that Fawad’s seniority-related statement could be to push the case against the practice before Qazi Faez Isa becomes the chief justice of Pakistan for 13 months in September next year.

Earlier in June, he had lampooned the ban on TikTok by SHC and the removal of the president of the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP).

Courts and PTA must stay away from moral policing and Ban Approach,such bans on internet based Apps ll destroy Pak tech industry and development of technology ll be permanently hampered,we are still not out of woods b/o judges illadvised interferece in economic matters

— Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) July 22, 2020

The information minister had taken to his Twitter account to express his frustration on both orders.

He had also blamed the judiciary for costing a loss worth billions of dollars to Pakistan emerging from incomprehensible verdicts.

Similarly, Fawad Chaudhry had hit the judiciary also when SHC suspended two MPAs of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) on the dog-bite cases in their respective constituencies.

The information minister looks keen as mustard about judicial reforms in Pakistan and he keeps reproaching the judiciary time and again which is likely to continue.