SC guidelines sought for govt to stop snooping on judges.

ISLAMABAD -- The senior counsel representing Justice Qazi Faez Isa wondered on Tuesday whether a judge should necessarily be put under detention or suffer other indignations to cross the yardstick of establishing that his dignity and privacy had been invaded upon.

'Nobody leaves a trail to prove about the instances of the invasion of privacy and covert surveillance against a judge,' argued Advocate Muneer A. Malik. The counsel was drawing comparison to the events after March 9, 2007, when former chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry was subjected to such abuses during the regime of then president General Pervez Musharraf.

Advocate Malik highlighted the need for the laying down of guidelines by the Supreme Court while adjudicating on the case at hand, spelling out what the executive could do or not do, so that no judge could be deprived of his privacy.

Justice Umar Ata Bandial, while heading a 10-judge full court hearing a set of petitions against the filing of the presidential reference against Justice Isa, observed that the court should not lay down high standards while deciding the present case. The Constitutional provision did not only deal with superior court judges, but it also dealt with the federal ombudsman, auditor general, members of the Election Commission as well as NAB chairman, the judge said, adding that otherwise everybody against whom the procedure for removal would commence under Article 209 would approach the SC by challenging the same.

'When it comes to a judge, then this court has to sit at the highest pedestal,' retorted the counsel. And when the court observed whether the counsel was hinting at something, the counsel recalled the saying: 'When they come for the trade unionist to pick him up, I remained silent because I was not the one, and when they come for the Jews and I remained silent, and when they came for me, nobody was left to speak for me.'

At this, Justice Faisal Arab observed that the SC always intervened when it felt that injustice had been done.

On Tuesday, Justice Muneeb Akhtar observed again that the counsel should give specific allegations to establish mala fide on part of the president but what had been stated in the allegations were general in nature. He recalled that the counsel was relying on observations made in a concurring judgement by Justice Ijaz in the Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry case which was not the ratio decidendi (rule of law) and thus not the law of the land. Therefore, he added, the...