Amid controversies: Mustafa Ramday resigns as acting advocate general

His appointment has been challenged as he does not fit the age requirement for the office.

LAHORE:

Acting Advocate General (AG) Mustafa Ramday on Friday resigned from his post citing personal reasons.

Several petitions had been filed in the Lahore High Court (LHC) against the appointment of Ramday, a son of former Supreme Court judge Khalilur Rehman Ramday, acting advocate general.

He had been holding the office of AG since July last year.

A petition in the LHC had challenged the appointment stating that Ramday was underage for the office and could not hold the constitutional post. In response to the petition, the government had told the court that Ramday was appointed acting AG in order to run the routine affairs of the office of the province’s top legal officer.

However, Ramday would appear not only in the LHC, but also before the Supreme Court on behalf of the government. As ex-officio chairman of the Punjab Bar Council (PbBC), Ramday had de-notified nine of its members and notified another nine lawyers as members.

The de-notified PbBC members later challenged Ramday’s appointment as AG.

On July 2, a full LHC bench directed the Punjab government to appoint a permanent AG within 15 days of the receipt of court orders.

The bench, headed by Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, issued the order on a petition by Advocate Rab Nawaz and others. Justice Aminuddin Khan and Justice Ayesha A Malik were other members of the bench.

Punjab Law Secretary Chaudhry Ilyas informed the bench that the provincial government had not made any progress to appoint a permanent AG and that the post had been lying vacant for a year.

The bench told Ilyas that there were 80,000 lawyers in the province yet “the government couldn’t shortlist 50 lawyers for appointment as AG?”

Justice Shah observed that the constitutional post had been lying vacant for a year and all related matters were pending.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 5^th, 2014.