Legal experts back calls for 'structuring' CJP's powers.

KARACHI -- While legal experts support Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail's demand for the framing of proper rules regarding the chief justice's discretionary powAers, they said that it was up to the Supreme Court to decide wheAther the verdict was a '3-2' or a '4-3' judgement, Dawn.com reported.

Speaking on the Samaa TV programme 'Nadeem Malik Live', Supreme Court advocate Salman Akram Raja said that the five-member bench hearing the PTI's plea challenging the electoral body's orders to put off Punjab Assembly elections would decide whether the 3-2 or 4-3 ruling was applicable to the March 1 order.

'It will be clear in a day or two. This is no big deal,' he said.

Mr Raja argued that according to the Constitution, smaller benches also represented the apex court's stance. 'There is no rule which says a full court will sit [...] we consider the bench to be the Supreme Court. Now, a bench is hearing the matter and it will decide what the previous verdict was. We will have to accept that decision.'

He said 'all issues' raised in the dissenting note were important. However, Mr Raja termed the demand for having certain rules for invoking the top court's suo motu jurisdiction as being a valid one. 'We should formulate rules immediately. However, we cannot just reject the past by saying that 'it was a one-man show' or 'chief justices made the benches',' he added.

He said that the reason why such rules had not yet been formulated was due to a lack of consensus among the top court judges.

Legal expert Salahuddin Ahmed, speaking on the Geo News programme Capital Talk, said that bar councils and associations had long demanded that the...