Ad-hoc appointments: Lawyer leaders react angrily to apex court’s resolution

SCBA and the PBC have condemned the resolution passed unanimously in a full reference of the Supreme Court SC.

LAHORE: The Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) and the Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) have condemned the resolution passed unanimously in a full reference of the Supreme Court (SC) in favour of extending the appointment of Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday and Justice (retd) Rehmat Hussain Jafri as ad hoc judges for a one-year term.

Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry presided, on Monday, over a full meeting of the SC which unanimously passed a resolution to appoint Justices Ramday and Jafri as ad hoc SC judges. Justice Ramday is already serving as an ad hoc SC judge and has two more days before the end of his current term.

While addressing a press conference on Tuesday, SCBA president Asma Jahangir said bars were showing strong resentment against the resolution.

The judges by adopting this resolution, she warned, had taken a political position. Lawyers would, in turn, also handle the matter politically. There should be a difference between trade unions, political parties, bar councils and the judiciary, she added.

Such acts were not becoming of the judiciary as they ran contrary to its own decisions, Jahangir said.

She observed that one should practice what one preaches and demanded that the government not adopt an accomodating policy in appointing judges.

She said that even though the resolution passed by the SC had no legal value and they cannot make such appointments, the judges should think before taking such steps. She said she wished to avoid language that would hurt feelings of the judges but in this matter, one of the potential beneficiaries was present at the meeting when the resolution was passed. Such behaviour, Jahangir said, did not become the SC judges. Only when there is a dire need for an ad hoc judge should one be appointed, the SCBA president added.

She said appointments like these would ruin the judiciary’s image. She said the bars would resist the decision when the Judicial Commission met to finalise the appointments.

Jahangir said that she had respect for Ramday for some good decisions but wondered if his presence on the bench was not meant now to humiliate lawyers and litigants. No one, she said, was indispensable. She said additional judges should be confirmed and the SC judges should review their resolution.

PBC member Muhammad Ahsan Bhoon said that lawyers had been counting the days left in Justice Ramday’s current ad hoc term and now he was being granted yet another term. The bench must feel the pulse of the bar before taking such decisions, he said. The PBC, he said, was completely against the resolution and would resist it.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 16^th, 2011.