September 19, 2025
Five Islamabad High Court judges challenge transfers, rules, and the misuse of powers that undermine judicial independence.
The present proceedings concern the demolition of the institutional independence of the Islamabad High Court, which is being witnessed not due to any dereliction of judicial duty by the petitioner judges, but solely because those judges, while bound by their oaths of office, resisted and objected to unlawful interference by the executive branch in the performance of their judicial functions. Their only act of defiance has been to adhere to their constitutional oath and to preserve the sanctity of the judicial process.
The petitioners, Justices Mohsin Akhtar Kayani, Babar Sattar, Tariq Mahmood Jahangiri, Saman Rafat, and Ejaz Ishaq Khan, have been compelled to approach the Supreme Court of Pakistan, instituting proceedings against the very institution to which they belong—the Islamabad High Court—and against its current Chief Justice. Their petitions delineate the factual background and the sequence of events which culminated in the present impasse.
The record reveals that during the tenure of the former Chief Justice of the Islamabad High Court, now elevated to the Supreme Court, Justice Aamer Farooq, the petitioner judges repeatedly raised grave concerns regarding executive intrusion into judicial affairs, coupled with efforts to exert pressure upon judges so as to influence outcomes in cases of particular sensitivity. Initially, these concerns were raised informally in a meeting of the judges of the Islamabad High Court and were also communicated to then–Chief Justice of Pakistan Umar Ata Bandial during a meeting at his residence in May 2023. Despite the seriousness of the matter, no effective redress or meaningful institutional response was forthcoming.
On 10 May 2023, six judges of the High Court, including the present petitioners, reduced their concerns to writing in a formal letter to the then–Chief Justice of the Islamabad High Court, drawing attention to attempts to influence judicial outcomes and recommending that contempt proceedings under Article 204 of the Constitution be initiated. No such proceedings were commenced. Thereafter, the same group of judges approached the then–Chief Justice of Pakistan, the senior puisne judge of the Supreme Court, Qazi Faez Isa, and Justice Ijazul Ahsan in yet another attempt to secure an institutional response. These efforts likewise bore no fruit, and the interference and intimidation persisted.
The matter gained renewed urgency when, in March 2024, the Supreme Court set aside the dismissal of Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui, who had earlier been removed by the Supreme Judicial Council in 2018 for publicly alleging manipulation of judicial benches by the Inter-Services Intelligence. Following that judgment, and in light of ongoing executive interference, six judges of the Islamabad High Court once again addressed a letter dated 25 March 2024 to the Supreme Judicial Council members and Supreme Court judges, seeking guidance as to the obligations of a judge confronted with unlawful interference by the executive.
In April 2024, the Supreme Court took suo motu cognisance of these matters and directed that proposals be submitted to determine the appropriate institutional response. Instead of convening a full court meeting for deliberation, the then–Chief Justice of the Islamabad High Court elected to circulate the order and seek written proposals, a course of action which the petitioner judges deemed inadequate. Only after repeated insistence by Justices Arbab Tahir, Babar Sattar, and Saman Rafat was a full court meeting convened on 23 April 2024, where it was unanimously resolved that a formal mechanism be instituted for reporting executive interference and remedial measures be adopted. Proposals were submitted to the Supreme Court, but no substantive proceedings have since taken place.
In the aftermath, steps were initiated to transfer judges from provincial high courts to the Islamabad High Court in a manner that disrupted the settled seniority of serving judges. Among those transferred was Justice Sardar Muhammad Sarfraz Dogar, who was soon thereafter appointed as Chief Justice of the Islamabad High Court. These transfers were carried out with undue haste and without meaningful consultation under Article 200 of the Constitution. The petitioner judges expressed reservations before both the Islamabad High Court and the Supreme Court regarding the deleterious effect of such transfers upon judicial independence. Nevertheless, three judges from provincial high courts were transferred immediately prior to the elevation of then–Chief Justice Aamer Farooq to the Supreme Court, and a revised seniority list was issued on 3 February 2025. Within days, Justice Dogar, after serving less than two weeks at the Islamabad High Court, was appointed Acting Chief Justice.
The petitioner judges were compelled to challenge the transfers and revised seniority list before the Supreme Court, which on 19 June 2025 remanded the issue to the President of Pakistan. An intra-court appeal was filed against that order, but the detailed reasons for the June 19 ruling remain pending, and the subsequent appeals are yet to be fixed for hearing. These events had the further consequence of excluding the senior-most judges of the Islamabad High Court from its administration and facilitated the unlawful adoption of the Islamabad High Court Practice and Procedure Rules, 2025.
The administration committee of the High Court was reconstituted to include newly transferred judges Dogar and Soomro, notwithstanding their lack of seniority. Justice Dogar had been ranked fifteenth at the Lahore High Court, while Justice Soomro, appointed as an additional judge as recently as April 2023, was ranked twenty-sixth at the Sindh High Court. Despite these positions, both were placed in the administration committee of the Islamabad High Court, thereby assuming immediate control over its administration.
Thereafter, amendments to the Practice and Procedure Rules were purportedly made without convening a full court, in contravention of Article 202 of the Constitution, which vests rule-making power exclusively in the High Court as a full court. The rules were later retrospectively endorsed by a narrow majority in a full court meeting, but only after their prior notification by an illegally constituted administration committee. When objections were raised, the Chief Justice declined to share minutes of the full court meeting, forcing dissenting judges to record written notes of protest.
Since assuming charge, Chief Justice Dogar has, according to the petitioners, misused his administrative authority to marginalise and render dysfunctional judges who challenged his transfer and seniority. He has reconstituted benches, transferred part-heard matters, and withheld cause lists, thereby interfering with the judicial work of his peers. He has excluded senior judges from divisional benches, stripped the senior puisne judge of responsibilities, and reassigned pending dockets without lawful authority, citing as justification a purported policy to establish a “Commercial Litigation Corridor.”
Moreover, Chief Justice Dogar has arrogated to himself powers unsupported by law, including the issuance of circulars requiring judges to obtain no-objection certificates for foreign travel, restricting the exercise of statutory leave entitlements, and barring publication of judgments on the court’s website without his approval. These measures, according to the petitioners, convert the office of Chief Justice into an autocracy inconsistent with the independence of the judiciary.
The subordinate judiciary under his control has also been destabilised, with judges on deputation lacking tenure security and subject to removal at will, thereby undermining judicial independence at the district level. In a matter of direct conflict of interest, when Justice Saman Rafat was designated under the Protection against Harassment at the Workplace Act, 2010 to administer a complaint lodged against him, Chief Justice Dogar annulled her appointment and replaced her with another judge, thereby acting as a judge in his own cause.
The Chief Justice has further extended his overreach into judicial powers by transferring pending cases and even issuing writs of certiorari against judges of the same court—an unprecedented and unlawful practice used to restrain petitioner judges from hearing matters before them. In one instance, a bench presided over by Chief Justice Dogar restrained Justice Tariq Mahmood Jahangiri from discharging his judicial functions.
The petitioner judges submit that such acts constitute self-destruction of the institution and are but the latest manifestation of retribution exacted upon them for deciding matters in a manner displeasing to powerful executive actors. The net effect of these developments has been the systematic erosion of the independence of the Islamabad High Court, the usurpation of its administrative structure, the marginalisation of its senior judges, and the conversion of its Chief Justice’s office into an instrument of executive influence, contrary to the Constitution and the oath of judicial office.
