Supreme Court Justices Mansoor Ali Shah and Athar Minallah handed in their resignations, hours after the contentious 27th Constitutional Amendment was signed into law by President Asif Ali Zardari on Thursday. Both judges had called on Chief Justice of Pakistan Yahya Afridi in separate letters to summon a full court meeting and judicial conference to hold a debate on the 27th Constitutional Amendment. In his letter to the president today, Justice Shah assailed the amendment as “a grave assault on the Constitution of Pakistan”, which “dismantles the Supreme Court of Pakistan, subjugates the judiciary to executive control, and strikes at the very heart of our constitutional democracy”. “By fracturing the unity of the nation’s apex court, it has crippled judicial independence and integrity, pushing the country back by decades,” he wrote. “As history bears witness, such a disfigurement of the constitutional order is unsustainable and will, in time, be reversed – but not before leaving deep institutional scars.”

Full report : ‘Constitution no more’: Justices Shah, Minallah resign from ‘diminished’ SC following passage of 27th Amendment.