Tribunal’s press note raises eyebrows

ISLAMABAD: The unprecedented press note issued by the Election Tribunal (ET) on NA-125, while announcing the judgment, has raised many eyebrows as neither such thing has ever happened in the past nor was there any need of such action.
Former judges of the Supreme Court and high courts in their chat with The News said that they, for the first time, have come across such a practice from a judge of an ET who is supposed to issue judgment and not press notes.
The basic task of the ETs and the courts is to announce judgments of the cases after completing the proceedings.Justice (R) Tariq Mehmood, while talking to The News, said this type of incident has never come to his knowledge that any ET or court has issued a press note rather than judgment.
“Even only high courts and the Supreme Court could release an interim judgment and this could not be done by the lower judiciary or Election Tribunals,” he commented. He further said that when the tribunal already had reserved the judgment a couple of days or weeks ago then instead of releasing press notes the judge of the tribunal should have issued the judgment.
Justice (R) Wajihuddin Ahmed also confirmed that he too has never came across such incident.“The reason behind releasing the press note might be helping the media persons to understand the verdict in common language and if the tribunal has issued the note because of this reason then this is not a wrong step.
However, one should also see the motives behind the issuance of such note or any such step and if this has been done to favour one party then this should not happen otherwise there is no harm,” commented Justice Wajih.
He further said that this is not a regular court which should follow the rules and procedure and the technicalities of such rules. Therefore, he said this is not a compulsion for any tribunal to follow such rules and this might have been done in order to make the media persons understand the decision easily.
When asked whether there is any such precedent when any court or tribunal has issued a press note rather than judgment, he said he has never heard of such thing and even the tribunal could not release any interim judgment.