The day the bench broke.

An important issue before the Supreme Court bench that broke was the inability of the government to provide Rs20 billion for their conduct of elections in Punjab. The media reported CJP's observation that the salaries could be slashed by 5% to fund the polls without disturbing the internationally known Fund mentioned by the Attorney General. Talking of Funds, one of CJP's predecessors had set up the Supreme Court of Pakistan and the Prime Minister of Pakistan Diamer-Bhasha and Mohmand Dams Fund in 2018. In January this year, a now familiar bench headed by CJP, including Justice Ijazul Ahsan and Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhel, reviewed its status. The court was informed that not a rupee had been spent on the dams. Donations were deposited in a State Bank account, while Dam Fund has become an investment account operated through the National Bank. Investment was made in the safest avenue i.e. 3-month Market Treasury Bills financing the bloated fiscal deficit of the Government of Pakistan. Secretaries of the same government told standard stories of financial constraints for not doing their own bit on dams in January. Predictably, these same stories will be repeated before the bench to be fixed again.

The whole idea of the Dam Fund was an example of judicial overreach, with no understanding of how projects costing hundreds of billions of rupees are financed. On February 9, 2023 the total collection stood at Rs11.46 billion, 16.6% from overseas and the larger portion domestically. Of the total domestic donations, 26.5% came from 10 institutions. Among these, the largest contribution of a little over a billion rupees was from the employees of the Government of Punjab, followed by the security establishment with a little under a billion rupees. From the private sector, Bahria Town took the lead and became the third largest donor with a contribution of...