Constitution | Pakistan

ISLAMABAD - As the federal capital is abuzz with rumours of imposing governor’ rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa creating unrest in the PTI’s provincial government, the federal government yesterday explained that the imposition of governor’s rule in a province is an option provided by the Constitution, even as KP Chief.

Chief Justice of the Federal Constitutional Court, Aminuddin Khan, said on Friday that protecting fundamental rights is the top priority of the constitutional court, and that the Constitution will be interpreted with transparency, freedom, and integrity.

The opposition alliance Tehreek-i-Tahafuz Ayeen-i-Pakistan (TTAP) on Friday vowed to vigorously protest through all democratic means to restore the Constitution to its original form in the wake of the passage of the contentious 26th and 27th amendments. President Asif Ali Zardari gave his assent to the contentious 27th Constitutional Amendment on Thursday, enacting it into law. The TTAP had already ann­o­unced a nationwide protest movement aga­i­nst the am­­end­ment since Sunday and urged the people to take a stand agai­nst the “extremely dark and dangerous” change in the Constitution. While the 26th Amendment was passed by Parliament during an overnight session in October 2024, with the PTI claiming seven of its lawmakers were abducted to gain their vote as the party opposed the legislation. The Balochistan National Party-Mengal (BNP-M) had also alleged its two senators were being pressured, with both later defying party line to vote in the tweaks’ favour. In a post on X today, the TTAP said it was holding a...

Supreme Court Justices Mansoor Ali Shah and Athar Minallah handed in their resignations, hours after the contentious 27th Constitutional Amendment was signed into law by President Asif Ali Zardari on Thursday. Both judges had called on Chief Justice of Pakistan Yahya Afridi in separate letters to summon a full court meeting and judicial conference to hold a debate on the 27th Constitutional Amendment. In his letter to the president today, Justice Shah assailed the amendment as “a grave assault on the Constitution of Pakistan”, which “dismantles the Supreme Court of Pakistan, subjugates the judiciary to executive control, and strikes at the very heart of our constitutional democracy”. “By fracturing the unity of the nation’s apex court, it has crippled judicial independence and integrity, pushing the country back by decades,” he wrote. “As history bears witness, such a disfigurement of the constitutional order is unsustainable and will, in time, be reversed - but not before leaving deep institutional scars.” T...

PTI Senator Ali Zafar detailed during a Senate session on Sunday five points that he said constituted the fundamental spirit of the 1973 Constitution and warned that altering the “balance of these five pillars” could lead to “major chaos”. The session was convened today — on a Sunday in a rare move — with a one-point agenda to deliberate on the bill for the 27th Constitutional Amendment. The 26-page Constitution (Twenty-Seventh Amendment) Act, 2025 was tabled in the Senate yesterday amid the opposition’s outcry over the pace and scope of the proposed changes, just hours after its approval by the federal cabinet. Senate Chairperson Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani presided over the session today, which began with the House remembering Allama Iqbal on his birth anniversary. Later, the house also passed a resolution in relevance to Iqbal Day. During the session, PTI lawmakers had pictures of their party founder Imran Khan placed on their desks. At the beginning of the proceedings, a PTI leader raised an objection, to whi...

The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) has called the proposed 27th Constitutional Amendment a “conspiracy against the Constitution” and refused to become part of the proceedings of the committee established to discuss the bill. “The proposed 27th Amendment is nothing short of a conspiracy against the Constitution. The entire process is being carried out in haste, without consultation or deliberation, in complete disregard of democratic norms and parliamentary traditions,” Senator Ali Zafar said while talking to Dawn. “These amendments strike at the very foundation of the constitutional structure by undermining the independence of the judiciary and eroding the delicate balance of powers that the 1973 Constitution so carefully created,” he said. “Any change to the Constitution must come only through broad-based national consensus, not through secret drafts or executive dictates. The Constitution belongs to the people of Pakistan, not to any government of the day, and no one has the right to mutilate it for politic...

Supreme Court judge Justice Athar Minallah on Friday termed extra-judicial killings, custodial torture and the excessive use of force as the most “intolerable crimes” in a democratic society, calling them the “worst form of violation” of the Constitution. In his dissenting note on the court’s judgement issued in a case pertaining to the killing of Mohammad Hayat Mirza, a Karachi University student, in Turbat, Justice Minallah said that there can be “no tolerance” for such acts and conduct by law enforcement agencies and its member. In 2020, police arrested a soldier of the Frontier Corps (FC), Shadiullah, on charges of killing Mirza and started an investigation after registering a case against him. The case was registered against the suspect on the complaint of Mohammad Murad Baloch, the brother of the deceased. The convicted had appealed to the SC following his sentencing by a trial court. The trial court, in a judgment on January 20, 2021, convicted the appellant under Section 302(b) (premeditated murder) o...

Peshawar - Governor Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Faisal Karim Kundi on Thursday said that lawyers have always played a vital role in politics and in the struggle for the supremacy of the Constitution.

Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail has stated that the formation of Supreme Court benches will be carried out strictly in accordance with the Constitution and the law, not based on individual preferences.

The Supreme Court’s Constitutional Bench (CB) on Thursday ruled that the eight-judge majority judgment announced on July 12, 2024, was not justified in granting relief to the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) by invoking Article 187 of the Constitution that empowers the court to do complete justice when no issue regarding the grant of reserved seats to the party was pending before it. Headed by Justice Aminuddin Khan, the CB through a short order on June 26 had overturned the July 12, 2024, majority judgment by declaring the PTI eligible for reserved seats for women and non-Muslims in the national and the provincial assemblies. In its detailed verdict issued on Thursday, 10 judges of the 12-judge CB held that there was no justification in giving relief to the PTI under Article 187, especially when appeals were filed and pursued by the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) under Article 185 (3) of the Constitution. The facts and circumstances of this case did not require application of Article 187, the detailed judgment sa...

ISLAMABAD - The Election Commission of Pakistan firmly rejects all baseless allegations, reaffirming that its decisions are guided solely by the Constitution, not by pressure or propaganda.

ISLAMABAD - The opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on Friday rejected the ruling of Supreme Court’s Constitutional Bench in reserved seats review case, describing it as a flagrant breach of the party’s constitutional rights, a murder of justice, and a direct assault on the Constitution and democracy.

ISLAMABAD: Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar on Monday observed that the Constitutional Bench (CB) will never hand out a decision in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) judge’s seniority dispute that may invite criticism that the top court had amended the Constitution on its own. The observation came when senior counsel Barrister Salahuddin Ahmed, on behalf of five IHC judges, highlighted changes in the IHC Administrative Committee. At this, Attorney General of Pakistan (AGP) Mansoor Usman Awan raised an objection, stating that the issue raised by the counsel was not challenged by anyone before the CB, nor can it be discussed in rebuttal arguments. Headed by Justice Mazhar, a five-judge CB had taken up a joint petition filed by five IHC judges — Justices Mohsin Akhtar Kayani, Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri, Babar Sattar, Sardar Ejaz Ishaq Khan and Saman Rafat Imtiaz – pleading that three transferred judges should not be treated as IHC judges until they take a fresh oath under Article 194, read in conjunction with Schedule III ...

United States President Donald Trump said in a television interview airing on Sunday that he does not know whether he must uphold the US Constitution. He also said he is not seriously considering running for a third White House term, after musing publicly over an idea clearly barred by the nation’s founding legal document. “I don’t know,” Trump responded when the host of NBC News programme ‘Meet the Press’, Kristen Welker, asked directly whether he believes he needs to uphold the supreme law of the land. Asked specifically whether American citizens and non-citizens alike deserve the due process of law, as the US Constitution states, Trump said: “I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know.” The president’s aggressive moves to deport undocumented migrants — some without the benefit of a court hearing — have drawn widespread criticism, but Trump insists it is necessary in the face of what he has declared to be a “national emergency”. The suggestion of possibly seeking a third term in office has been sharply questioned by le...

ISLAMABAD - The Chief Justice of Pakistan Thursday said that the Constitution embodies the right to dignity, fair remuneration and just and humane conditions of work as fundamental principles of policy.