SCBA asks SC to take up its review plea on defectors' votes.

ISLAMABAD -- The Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) has urged the apex court to take up urgently its petition seeking review of the court's opinion on the interpretation of Article 63A of the Constitution, given through a short order on May 17.

In a statement issued on Sunday, SCBA president Muhammad Ahsan Bhoon said hearing of the review petition had now become important in view of the raging debate over the interpretation of Article 63A(1b) - a matter related strictly to an understanding of the Constitution.

Ahsan Bhoon advised all political parties to refrain from making orders of the apex court and its judges controversial and let the court interpret constitutional matters.

By a majority of three to two, the SC held on May 17 in a presidential reference that since Article 63A ensures fundamental rights of a parliamentary party rather than its members, a vote cast contrary to the party line should not be counted.

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The short order had further held that political parties were an integral part of the bedrock on which democracy rests and attempts to weaken them would put democracy itself in peril.

The SCBA then moved a review petition on June 23 with a plea that the apex court's opinion was not in accord with the norms of parliamentary democracy and that the interpretation of Article 63A adopted by the Supreme Court amounted to reincarnating the proviso to Article 96(5). The clause had been made subject to a sunset clause by the framers and had never been reintroduced by parliament, Ahsan Bhoon observed.

Defectors' votes

The review petition emphasised that the framers of the Constitution had intended to disregard votes by defectors as a stop-gap arrangement to ensure stability during the first decade after promulgation of the statute, Mr. Bhoon argued.

Had it been the architects' intent or subsequently, of parliament, to make a provision for disregarding defectors' votes, a clause similar to the proviso of erstwhile Article 96(5) could have been inserted.

Had the review petition been taken up by the court before the recent vote for election of the Punjab chief minister, Ahsan Bhoon said, no controversy over the interpretation of Article...