• Commission directed to appoint senior officer for court’s assistance
• Petitioner told KU will be notified later
ISLAMABAD: A division bench of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Tuesday sought relevant record from the Higher Education Commission (HEC) regarding the law degree of Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri.
The division bench comprising Chief Justice Sardar Mohammad Sarfraz Dogar and Justice Mohammad Azam Khan resumed the hearing of a petition filed by lawyer Mian Dawood. Representatives of the legal fraternity, along with amicus curiae Barrister Zaffarullah Khan, also appeared before the bench.
During the proceedings, the petitioner urged the court to summon the academic record directly from Karachi University (KU), contending that the LLB degree of Justice Jahangiri had been cancelled by the university. The Sindh High Court (SHC), on a petition filed by Justice Jahangiri, had suspended KU’s order regarding the degree’s cancellation.
Chief Justice Dogar observed that since the HEC was the regulatory authority for universities, the bench would first examine the record provided by the commission before issuing any notice to KU.
The court also passed the direction to the HEC to appoint a senior officer for court’s assistance.
At this stage, a representative of the Islamabad Bar Council (IBC) drew the court’s attention to the council’s pending application seeking to become a party to the case. The bench assured the representative that the application would be considered and taken up in due course. The matter was subsequently adjourned.
The case has undergone a complex procedural trajectory since it first came before the court on September 16, when the same division bench initially took up the matter. At that hearing, the bench issued an interim order restraining Justice Jahangiri from performing judicial functions until the maintainability of the petition could be examined.
The decision — issued without prior notice to the respondent — prompted considerable debate within the legal community.
The Supreme Court later intervened, and on September 29 set aside the IHC’s restraining order. A five-member constitutional bench headed by Justice Aminuddin Khan held that no high court could bar a sitting judge from performing judicial duties by granting interim relief.
The apex court emphasised that its ruling was confined to the legality of the interim order and did not touch upon the underlying merits of the petition.
During proceedings before the Supreme Court, Attorney General for Pakistan Mansoor Usman Awan acknowledged that the petition raised an unprecedented legal question, as quo warranto proceedings against sitting judges were exceedingly rare.
He referred to the 1988 Malik Asad Ali judgement, in which the SC held that judges could not be restrained from judicial functions through interim orders. The SC then asked the IHC to decide the objections raised to the petition and proceed in this matter accordingly.
Published in Dawn, December 3rd, 2025
