ISLAMABAD (MNN); President Asif Ali Zardari on Friday accepted the resignations of Supreme Court judges Mansoor Ali Shah and Athar Minallah, according to a post from the Presidency on X.
Both judges stepped down a day earlier, only hours after the president signed the highly disputed 27th Constitutional Amendment into law, calling the move an attack on the judiciary and the spirit of the 1973 Constitution.
In his 13-page resignation letter, written in English and Urdu, Justice Mansoor Ali Shah stated that he was stepping down “in full awareness of the reasons that compel this decision, and in loyalty to the Constitution that has guided my judicial journey”.
Justice Shah described the 27th Amendment as a grave assault on the Constitution, saying it effectively dismantled the Supreme Court, placed the judiciary under executive control and damaged the foundations of constitutional democracy. He said the amendment made access to justice “distant, fragile, and vulnerable to power”.
Justice Athar Minallah, in his resignation letter, lamented that the Constitution he had sworn to protect was “no more”. He wrote that pretending otherwise would be “an assault on its memory”, adding that the new legal structure stood over the grave of the original constitutional framework.
Both judges had earlier written to Chief Justice Yahya Afridi, urging him to convene a full court to discuss the amendment.
However, according to a Supreme Court press release, the full court meeting held today did not take up the 27th Amendment. Instead, the judges gave final approval to the Supreme Court Rules, 2025.
Meanwhile, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif criticised the resignations, saying the judges’ “consciences only awakened after their monopoly was curtailed”.
