(): Pakistan People’s Party chairman and ex-foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari on Monday approached the Supreme Court for live streaming of proceedings on a case seeking to revisit the controversial death sentence given to the party founder and former premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

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

A nine-member larger bench of the apex court will commence on Tuesday the long-pending presidential case seeking to revisit the death sentence given to Bhutto.

The case was filed on behalf of former president Asif Ali Zardari on April 2, 2011, to seek an opinion on revisiting the death sentence given to the former premier under the Supreme Court’s advisory jurisdiction. Headed by Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa, the larger bench will consist of Justices Sardar Tariq Masood, Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, Yahya Afridi, Amin-ud-Din Khan, Jamal Khan Mandokhel, Muhammad Ali Mazhar, Syed Hasan Azhar Rizvi and Musarrat Hilali. On Monday, Bilawal, through his lawyer Farooq H Naek, filed a petition in the top court requesting that the hearing of the case should be “live/on-air” so that the entire country could hear it, Dawn newspaper reported.

“The reference was filed by the then president of Pakistan namely Asif Ali Zardari, who is the father of the present applicant, hence, the applicant is the son of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto and the grandson of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was the founder of the Pakistan

People’s Party and a great leader of unprecedented scale, caliber, and character,” the plea said.