Removal of PCO judges: SC accepts LHCBA petition for preliminary hearing

Petition argues that the judgment was biased, contravened provisions of Constitution

ISLAMABAD: The top court has accepted for preliminary hearing the Lahore High Court Bar Association’s (LHCBA) constitutional petition, seeking review of the court's July 31, 2009 verdict, wherein more than 100 superior court judges were removed.

The review plea was filed by the LHCBA and 97 judges, who had to quit their offices in the wake of the Supreme Court’s July 31, 2009 verdict, which declared as unconstitutional the proclamation of state of emergency on November 3, 2007 by military ruler Pervez Musharraf.

The Supreme Court’s three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali on Friday took up the LHCBA appeal against the SC registrar office’s February 6, 2014 decision to return a petition seeking review of the verdict.

The LHCBA’s counsel Barrister Syed Ali Zafar and the judges through the petition, filed under Article 184(3) of the Constitution, challenged the scope of the July 31, 2009 verdict and said a number of judges who had taken oath under the Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) after the proclamation of emergency were forced to resign because of contempt cases initiated against them.

Their petition argued that the judgment was biased and contravened provisions of the Constitution because many judges were removed without following due process of law, thus depriving both the bench and the bar of eminent jurists.

But the Supreme Court’s registrar said the review petition was not ‘entertainable’ and returned it. The petitioners were, therefore, left with no option but to move an appeal against the registrar’s decision, pleading that none of his objections held any ground, the petition said.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 9^th, 2016.