New version of SC verdict placed on website
Source: Dawn
By Khawar Ghumman
Saturday, 01 May, 2010
ISLAMABAD, April 30: A judgment posted on the Supreme Court’s website on Wednesday was replaced within an hour with another version.
As a result, details carried by the media of the judgment against promotion of 54 bureaucrats differed from the version later sent to the establishment division and the prime minister’s secretariat.
Although the court issued a corrigendum on Thursday regarding the mistake, mystery surrounds what led to changes in the judgment.
Surprisingly, the court had announced the date for the pronouncement of this judgment one week in advance — a practice which has not been exercised in a number of detailed verdicts issued over the past months.
A statement issued by Supreme Court Registrar Dr Faqir Hussain said an unedited copy of the judgment had been released initially because of an inadvertent mistake. The Supreme Court regretted the incident, he said.
The registrar said an inquiry had been ordered and the staff members concerned suspended.
According to sources, the prime minister’s secretariat was perplexed over the difference between the detailed judgment received for implementation and that reported by a section of the media.
There was a marked difference between their languages. For instance, the concluding paragraph numbered 35 in the second version and 33 in the one that was withdrawn.
Part (a) of paragraph 33 of the first version said that “while issuing notifications for the promotion of officers from BS21 to BS22, the government has violated Articles 4, 9 and 25 of the Constitution”. The statement was missing from the last paragraph of the revised version.
Version 1 vs Version 2!
One can only say that the present Bunch, or Bench if you like, of judges has lost its poise and equanimity. Since their restoration, there has hardly been a single decision that has not been tainted with a heavy dose of political and religious overtones. On top of that, these rulings, not restricted to just constitutional vires or legal arguments, as they should have been, they were supplemented rather pre-sold, on the crutches of a highly biased media coverage touching sensationalism which was, and is still being, most disturbingly overlooked by the same Bunch.