ISLAMABAD: All six bills approved by the Senate and the National Assembly of Pakistan earlier have turned into law following acting president Yusuf Raza Gilani signed them on Tuesday, local media reported.
According to media reports, the acting president also signed all six bills including the Supreme Court Number of Judges (Amendment) Bill, 2024, the Supreme Court Practice and Procedure (Amendment) Bill, 2024, and the Islamabad High Court (Amendment) bill, 2024.
The Senate on Monday passed the bills shortly after they were approved by the National Assembly seeking to increase the number of the Supreme Court judges to 34 and extend the tenure of services chiefs.
The upper house of the parliament passed the bills presented by Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar amid the opposition’s protest. One of the bills sought to increase the number of judges in the Supreme Court to 34 in a bid to clear the cases’ backlog.
It also passed amendments to the Pakistan Army, Air Force, and Navy Acts to increase the tenures of service chiefs.
Earlier, Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar while presenting the bill in the National Assembly said: This amendment will increase the number of judges in the Supreme Court up to 34, so that the backlog of cases can be cleared, and that after the 26th Amendment, we can have judges to form the constitutional benches.
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“Our bar lobbies and the SCBA (Supreme Court Bar Association) have been recommending this for a while now so that the four-bar court registries in Karachi, Quetta, Peshawar, and Lahore can relieve their thousands of pending cases. This number has been left open for the judicial commission,” the minister went on to say. The voting on the bill was held despite the opposition protest.
During today’s session, the Lower House passed six bills including, “The Supreme Court Practice and Procedure (Amendment) Bill, 2024 and “The Islamabad High Court (Amendment) Bill, 2024.
