The government is likely to file a petition by the middle of this month seeking review against the Supreme Court (SC) verdict that scrapped the 16th amendment of the Constitution. “We may not be able to file the review petition by this week. It'll take some time to prepare the review petition. We're studying the verdict now,” attorney general Mahbubey Alam told The Independent last night. The 16th amendment to the Constitution had empowered Parliament to remove SC judges for incapacity or misconduct. It was first scrapped by the High Court (HC) and then the Appellate Division upheld the HC verdict in this regard. The government received the certified copy of the apex court verdict on October 10. As per the rules, the review petition has to be filed within 30 days of receiving the copy

of the verdict.  When this correspondent draws the attention to the 30-day period, which will expire on November 9, Mahbubey Alam said that they would seek pardon for the delay in filing the review petition.

 “We’ll not able to file the review petition by this week. We’ll seek pardon for the delay, if needed, as it’s a huge task to prepare the review petition for a important case like this,” he noted.

 The government has recently formed an 11-member committee, headed by attorney general Mahbubey Alam, to prepare a review petition against the Supreme Court (SC) verdict on the 16th amendment to the Constitution.

 The other members of the committee are: additional attorney generals Murad Reza and Momtaz Uddin Fakir, deputy attorney generals Motahar Hossain Saju, Bishwajt Debnath, Ekramul Huq Tutul, Masud Hasan Chowdhury Parag, Khandakar Diliruzzaman, Amit Talukdar and Rashed S Jahangir, and assistant attorney general Bashir Ahmed.

 Attorney general Mahbubey Alam said yesterday that the members of the committee have been working relentlessly to prepare the review petition against the Appellate Division verdict.  The review petition will be filed before the Appellate Division of the SC, seeking the cancellation of its earlier verdict, he added.

 In response to a query, Mahbubey Alam said that in the review petition, the government would pray to the SC to restore Parliament’s power to remove SC judges for incapacity or misbehaviour. “I have informed the government about the formation of the committee,” he added.  The apex court on August 1 released the full text of its verdict, scrapping the 16th amendment to the Constitution.  On September 17, 2014, the Jatiya Sangsad had passed the ‘Constitution (16th Amendment) Bill, 2014’ without any opposition, empowering Parliament to impeach judges of the SC for their ‘incapacity’ or ‘misconduct’.  On November 5 that year, nine SC lawyers filed a writ petition with the HC, questioning the validity of the amendment.  On May 5 last year, the HC declared the 16th amendment to the Constitution illegal. On January 4 this year, the government filed an appeal challenging the HC decision. But, on July 3, a seven-member bench, led by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha, upheld the HC verdict.