Appointment: Zahid Hussain tipped as new FST head

Former apex court judge to fill position vacated last month

ISLAMABAD: The federal government has decided to appoint Justice (retd) Syed Zahid Hussain as the new chairman of the Federal Services Tribunal (FST).

On November 4, the government had assured the Supreme Court the chairperson of the tribunal would be appointed within 15 days. The attorney general of Pakistan made the assurance on behalf of the government before the three-judge apex court bench headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan.

A senior official told The Express Tribune the government has made up its mind to appoint Zahid, a former superior court judge, as the FST chairman.

The notification of his appointment will be issued soon. The tenure of the FST chairman is three years.

On October 16, the top court had asked the government to consider de-notifying then FST Chairman Sheikh Ahmad Farooq and the tribunal’s other 11 members. The court had termed the authority’s structure illegal, declaring it was set up against its January 1, 2013, judgment in the Sheikh Riazul Haq case.

The judgment required the appointment of the FST chairman, as well as its members, be made in consultation with the top judge in the country, the Chief Justice of Pakistan.

In that verdict, a three-judge bench headed by then chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry had held the functions of the service tribunal to be a “judicial function” in exercise of “judicial powers” conferred upon it by the legislature. Thus the FST enjoys the status of a court and is bound to be separate from the executive under Article 175(3) of the Constitution.

An official contended that under the law, consultations with the chief justice were not binding. “But the government has made informal consultations with him over the name of Justice (retd) Zahid,” he said.

Zahid has served as the Lahore High Court chief justice for a few years. He started off as an additional judge of the LHC on May 21, 1998 and was confirmed on May 19, 1999. Later, he was elevated to the Supreme Court but was removed on July 31, 2009, because he had taken oath as a judge of LHC under the controversial Provisional Constitutional Order.

The 12-member FST is a judicial forum that redresses civil servants’ service-related grievances. The Supreme Court is the appellant forum against the tribunal’s decisions. Thousands of cases are pending before the FST.


Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2015.