ISLAMABAD, June 1: An opposition party of Azad Kashmir seeking the replacement of a controversial chief justice of the territory said on Monday its workers and lawyers would agitate the row during the planned lawyers’ march on Islamabad this month for the restoration of the country’s deposed superior court judges.

Former Azad Kashmir prime minister Sultan Mahmood Chaudhry told a news conference after a meeting with lawyers associated with his People’s Muslim League that his party would take ‘full part’ in the Pakistani lawyers’ march planned to begin on June 10 and would raise the issue of what he called an illegal appointment of Azad Kashmir Supreme Court’s Chief Justice Reaz Akhtar Chaudhry in 2006 by superseding the senior-most hopeful Justice Manzur Hussain Gillani.

He said while Pakistani lawyers and political parties were struggling for the reinstatement of the superior court judges deposed under President Pervez Musharraf’s controversial Nov 3, 2007 emergency proclamation, his party wanted reversal of an illegality committed in Azad Kashmir by the same regime.

The judicial bus starting from Multan on June 10 (to herald the lawyers’ march to Islamabad) could turn to Muzaffarabad as well, Mr Chaudhry said.

He said Justice Reaz Akhtar was elevated to Azad Kashmir’s three-judge Supreme Court from the chief justice of the high court after he supervised an allegedly rigged election there and was made the chief justice in less than a month on the orders of then Pakistani prime minister Shaukat Aziz in his capacity as chairman of the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Council, or the upper house of the territory’s legislature.

The move, he said, was in violation of the principle of seniority and was a reward for a rigged election won by the ruling All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference with what he called open blessings of President Musharraf.

The Pakistan People’s Party, now leading the coalition government in Pakistan, had also protested against the appointment at the time and promised to take up the matter with rights groups.

“Our information is that this matter is being considered now (by the new Pakistani government),” Mr Chaudhry said about a possible move to rectify the situation and proposed that the present chief justice, who also continues to be the acting chief election commissioner of Azad Kashmir, could be accommodated as the chief of the area’s Shariat Court with the same status.

He said Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani could make the change as the present chairman of Kashmir Council.