Special Correspondent
ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court of Pakistan has lamented that the violence continued to be perceived as a permissible means to attain one’s goals as evident from the May 9 incidents. The remarks made by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Justice Qazi Faez Isa came as a three-member Supreme Court bench, headed by the CJP, and comprising Justice Athar Minallah and Justice Aminuddin Khan, heard a review petition filed against the SC’s 2019 judgement in the Faizabad sit-in case. Following Wednesday’s court proceedings, the government announced a three-member commission to identify those who planned, financed, and supported a sit-in at Islamabad’s Faizabad area six years back—a dharna that had brought a little-known religious party, the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), into the national spotlight.
According to the government’s notification, the commission will also recommend legal action against the planners and executors of the protest which disrupted lives in the twin cities Rawalpindi and Islamabad between November 6 and November 27, 2017. As a result of the protest, the PML-N government had to sack its law minister Zahid Hamid. The Supreme Court had taken suo motu notice of the sit-in on November 21, 2017.
Later, a division bench led by Justice Qazi Faez Isa on February 6, 2019 unveiled its verdict in the sit-in case, criticizing the role of intelligence agencies in the saga. Soon after assuming office of the chief justice of Pakistan (CJP) in September this year, Justice Isa listed for hearing the petitions that had been filed against the SC’s February 2019 verdict.
