Sindh

Extension rejected: Sindh sends lawyer to SC to fight for 2 judges

In a bid to get two Sindh judges back, lawyers have dispatched a representative to Islamabad.

Express February 25, 2011

KARACHI: In a bid to get two Sindh judges back, lawyers have dispatched a representative to Islamabad for a Supreme Court hearing on Friday, challenging the government’s decision to retire them.

The president of the Sindh High Court Bar Association, Anwar Mansoor Khan, left for Islamabad on Thursday. The petition challenges the parliarmentary committee’s decision to retire Justice Muhammad Tasnim and Justice Salman Hamid of the Sindh High Court. The decision was made despite the judicial commission’s unanimous recommendation to give them extensions. The petition, which was filed on Thursday after an emergency meeting of the association, authorised the association’s president and the honorary secretary to move the apex court.

Khan told The Express Tribune that according to some media reports, both judges were not approved for an extension in service on the basis of a report by the newly appointed Sindh High Court chief justice. However, even if this were true, such an observation or report would be considered part of the consultation between the Sindh High Court chief justice and the chief justice of the Supreme Court. It could not become the basis for the parliamentary committee’s decision.

The rejection appears to be malicious, said Khan. It is also strange how the proceedings and consultations between judicial heads became known to others, who were not associated with the consultative process, he said.

On Wednesday, the SHCBA held a meeting to discuss the PC’s decision to reject the recommendations of the judicial commission. They passed a unanimous resolution condemning the decision by the PC.

The resolution read “action by the PC in refusing to allow Justice Tasnim and Justice Salman Hamid to continue as Additional Judges for another period of one year despite the unanimous recommendation of the Judicial Custody without giving any cogent reason in terms of Article 175-A (of the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973) is condemnable”.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 25^th, 2011.