27th Amendment: The End of Separation of Powers?

Barrister Salahuddin Ahmed, a senior constitutional expert, warned that the government's proposed 27th Constitutional Amendment would “sound the death knell” for judicial independence, effectively replacing the Supreme Court with a new Federal Constitutional Court directly appointed by the prime minister. In this video, he said the change would allow the executive to control judicial appointments and transfer judges at will, stripping away decades of constitutional jurisprudence and precedent. The court’s broad powers under Article 199 would let it hear all major appeals against government actions, he added, meaning citizens’ cases against the state would ultimately be decided by judges handpicked by the executive — erasing the separation of powers.

Ahmed said the government’s justification of “speedy justice” was a façade, noting that the Supreme Court’s backlog accounts for only a fraction of the country’s 2.4 million pending cases. He described the amendment’s transfer rules as tools of coercion, likening judges to civil servants whose postings can be manipulated for political ends. He also said revisions to Article 243, granting lifetime rank and protection to a field marshal, effectively institutionalized military dominance and entrenched a “lifelong dictatorship.” The overarching aim, he argued, was to neuter the judiciary and formalise the military’s supremacy under constitutional cover — leaving little hope for independent judicial review once the amendments are enacted.