Imran Khan is challenging a three-member committee investigating audio leaks

• Plea asks court to overturn government notice.
• Khan says no judge can be nominated without the consent of the CJP.
• The Minister of Justice said earlier that the government has not consulted the CJP.

After questioning the government over the “deliberate omission” of the Terms of Reference (TORs), Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan has called for the formation of the three-member judicial committee that will investigate the audio leaks related to to the judiciary, challenged in the Supreme Court.

Babar Awan, the lawyer and party leader of the PTI chief, filed the plea on his behalf and asked the court to annul the notice for forming the committee.

The government set up a three-member judicial commission on Saturday to investigate audio leaks involving retired and incumbent members of the judiciary, as well as lawyers casting doubt on the institution’s credibility. The judicial body was instructed to complete the job within 30 days.

Justice Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar said earlier that the government did not consult Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial before the commission was formed.

The judicial panel – headed by Senior Puisne Judge Qazi Faez Isa and comprising Balochistan High Court Chief Justice Naeem Akhtar Afghan and Islamabad High Court (IHC) CJ Aamer Farooq as members – was set up in the wake of widely circulated controversial audios that raised “serious concerns on the independence, impartiality and sincerity of the chief justices/judges of the higher courts in the administration of justice”.

The government said the audio leaks raised serious concerns about the independence of the judiciary in the public interest; hence it formed the commission under section 3 of the Pakistan Commissions of the Inquiry Act, 2017.

In the petition filed today, Khan argues that no judge can be nominated for the commission without the consent of the Chief Justice of Pakistan.

“The Supreme Judicial Council is the sole forum for investigation or action against a Supreme Court Justice,” the petition reads.

In his plea, the PTI chief insisted that the commission’s TORs “suffer from a willful omission” with no accountability as to who is “behind the unlawful and unconstitutional oversight.”

The cricketer turned politician took to his Twitter and also shared a strongly worded tweet in this regard.

“They fail to consider who is behind the unlawful and unconstitutional oversight of the Prime Minister’s office and the sitting Supreme Court judges. The Commission should be empowered to investigate who are these powerful and unknown elements who eavesdropping and recording. including senior public officials,” he tweeted.