a manner as may be determined by Act of Parliament and the Parliament enacted Representation of People Act, 1976, under which election tribunals were constituted.
He stated that no court, institution or authority except election tribunals can question the elections to the parliament and provincial assemblies as was clearly mandated by the Article 225 and any violation of the Constitution will subvert the constitutional and legal process in the country.
The counsel contended that many election petitions have been decided by the election tribunals and even re-elections have been held in some of the constituencies and establishing a commission over and above the legal process will be outright violation of the Constitution.
He submitted that the situation in the country called for electoral reforms for which a parliamentary committee has been established and political parties could bring electoral reforms through legal and constitutional process in order to make the electoral process foolproof but any other unconstitutional process would be detrimental to the constitutional machinery of the country.
He said that the government has shown ultimate disregard towards constitutional provisions by proposing the establishment of judicial commission and the same will also be violation of the judgments of the Supreme Court that had recently dismissed the petitions filed under Article 184(3) of the Constitution, whereby elections results of 2013 general elections were challenged by the petitioner on the ground of rigging, holding that such petitions were not maintainable in the view of Article 225 of the Constitution.
He submitted that setting up a commission to look into the electoral disputes of individuals constituencies was not possible in view of Article 225, which envisages that no election can be called into question except by an election petition presented to the election tribunal adding that formation of Judicial Commission to inquire into the allegations of rigging at various constituencies is in flagrant violation of the Articles 4, 5, 97, 175 and 225 of the Constitution.
The court was prayed to declare that the proposed establishment of judicial commission to conduct inquiry into allegations of rigging and/or in any other electoral disputes in 2013 general elections was unconstitutional and unlawful and restrain the government from establishing such a judicial commission till final adjudication of the petition.
The division bench, headed by Justice Mohammad Ali Mazhar, after preliminary hearing of the petition issued notices for February 6.