ISLAMABAD  -  The Supreme Court was asked to declare that the 26th Constitutional Amendment was passed contrary to the Constitution and law and has no legal effects. In this matter, two more petitions were filed on Friday assailing the 26th Constitutional Amendment, one by former Chief Minister of Balochistan and President of Balochistan National Party Akhtar Mengal, former Speaker National Assembly Fahmida Mirza, former Senator and Minister Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar and ex-MNA Mohsin Dawar, and others by Advocate Salahuddin Ahmed.

They have requested that the matter be placed before a Full Court of all eligible judges. They contended that the trichotomy of power requires mutual respect among the three organs of State; the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. In the past, there have been genuine complaints about judicial overreach into the executive and legislative domain. The instant case, however, involves parliamentary overreach into judicial domain. The three organs of State, necessarily, impose certain checks and balances on the other – this delicate system must not descend into a game of constitutional tit for tat.

The petitioners also prayed to direct independent inquiry into the manner in which votes were allegedly coerced and procured in Parliament in relation to the said Act.

They added that the manner and circumstances in which the said Act was passed was constitutionally defective. It is thus non est. It has no legal force and is not an Act at all.

The legal position remains the same as it was prior to its purported promulgation.

The so-called “Constitutional Benches” cannot examine the constitutionality of the very legislative instrument that creates them. Nor can members of the Constitutional Bench be judges in their own cause.

They also stated that the said Act is also substantively ultra vires the salient features of the Constitution relating to the independent of judiciary and trichotomy of powers and federalism.