[Reader-list] Of Graduates, Legislators and Pakistan Supreme Court

[Kshmendra Kaul]

Of Graduates, Legislators and Pakistan Supreme Court
   
   
  April 21, 2008 - 7 member bench of Pakistan's Supreme Court (as currently constituted) struck down the condition that only 'graduates' could become Legislators. The bench was headed by current Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar.
   
  This requirement was introduced into Pakistan's Representation of Peoples Act by the self-styled Chief Executive Musharraf in 2002 by means of a 'Chief Executive Order".
   
  On July 11, 2002,  a 5 member bench of Pakistan's Supreme Court dismissed a petition of challenge againsty that Order and upheld the requirement of being "graduate" for Legislators.
   
  The 'dismissive' of the petition and unanimously so, bench of 2002 included the currently deposed Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry. During the hearings he had reportedly observed "... the Government was spending only 2.3 per cent of the GDP on the education but it was expecting everybody to be a graduate". His own observation did not somehow seem to tilt his final word in favour of the petition.
   
  Chaudhry has much to answer for including his taking of the oath of a Justice under one of Musharraf's PCOs.
   
  Had this repealment of what was was an 'idiotic' condition in the eyes of many and perhaps most people have anything to do with the undercurrents  of confrontation between the "in-chair" Chief Justice Dogar and the "deposed' Chief Justice Chaudhary?  
   
  Kshmendra Kaul
   
   

       
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