WATCH: CJP Isa reprimands lawyer for wasting time in important case

Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Justice Qazi Faez Isa scolded a lawyer for wasting time in a case related to 'fixing disqualification tenure of Parliamentarians'.

The CJP lost his cool when a lawyer said he would take two minutes of the court for the arguments in the case.

Please stop wasting time by saying I will just take two minutes. 

Earlier, Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Qazi Faez Isa took up the presidential reference seeking ghte SC's opinion on the death sentence awarded to the former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

He regretted the delay in the fixing of a presidential reference seeking the Supreme Court’s opinion on the 1979 controversial death sentence awarded to former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, saying that it “merits determination”.

“[…] This is the oldest pending remaining presidential reference,” he observed.

The chief justice passed these remarks as a nine-member larger bench of the apex court resumed hearing the long-pending reference. The case proceedings were broadcast live.

Headed by CJP Isa, the larger bench consisted of Justice Sardar Tariq Masood, Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, Justice Yahya Afridi, Justice Amin-ud-Din Khan, Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhel, Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar, Justice Syed Hasan Azhar Rizvi and Justice Musarrat Hilali.

The reference was filed on behalf of former president Asif Ali Zardari on April 2, 2011, for an opinion on revisiting the death sentence awarded to the former premier under the Supreme Court’s advisory jurisdiction.

It was filed before the top court under Article 186 (1 and 2) of the Constitution, which empowers the president to refer any question of public importance to the Supreme Court to seek its opinion on an issue.

The reference was last heard by an 11-judge panel, headed by then chief justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, in Jan 2012.

In March 1978, a four-member bench of Lahore High Court had awarded the death sentence to Bhutto, which was later challenged in the top court. In a four to three split verdict, a seven-judge SC had bench upheld the sentence during the military regime of the then-army chief Gen Ziaul Haq in March 1979.