Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. — File photo/Online

ISLAMABAD: The Judicial Commission (JC) on Saturday proposed elevation of seven judges to the Peshawar High Court (PHC) and granted six-month extension to six additional judges of the Lahore High Court (LHC).

However, the main issue before the JC’s meeting was the continuation of the deadlock between the bar associations and the commission since none of the representative of the bar attended it to represent the point of view of the legal fraternity.

Attorney General Irfan Qadir and Law Minister Farooq H. Naek were also missing from the meeting as was Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah.

On Jan 26 also, the JC had held its meeting in the absence of key officers. The bone of contention was the Pakistan Bar Council’s resolution highlighting growing apprehensions that the participation in the commission was not meaningful as the representatives of the bar were not consulted too much on the matters at hand.

The PBC, being the apex body of the legal fraternity, is of the view that every member of the commission should have the right to propose names for the appointment of judges in the commission’s meeting. This needs suitable amendment of the rules framed by the JC and till the time the rules are framed no nomination will be made, the PBC resolution said.

Meanwhile, Saturday’s meeting of the JC was presided over by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry to consider names of eight judges for appointment as PHC judges but decided to approve only seven.

Those who were nominated to be appointed as additional judges were Afsar Ali Shah, Laal Jan Khattak, Ikramullah Khan, Abdul Latif Khan, Musarrat Hilali, Saud Khan and Malik Manzoor Hassan. The judge who was not nominated was Hayat Ali Shah.

Similarly the commission gave six months’ extension to six judges of LHC namely Justice Abdus Sami Khan, Justice Ayesha A Malik, Justice Shahid Waheed, Justice Baqir Ali Najfi, Justice Shujaat Ali and Justice Ibadur Rehman Lodhi. Their one-year tenure is ending on March 27, 2013.

Meanwhile, before attending the meeting of the JC, the chief justice gave a word of advice to the additional districts and sessions judges to keep their cool, remain clam and quiet and never lose their temperament while dealing with lawyers, litigants and supportive staff.

“A judge should always act with complete neutrality and impartiality,” the chief justice observed while speaking at the certificate distribution ceremony at the Federal Judicial Academy. A number of judicial officers from all over Pakistan including AJK participated.

In his advice, the chief justice observed that the judicial officers should perform their duties as a sacred trust since ‘Adl” (justice) was the attribute of Allah Almighty.

“Work hard to alleviate the miseries of the aggrieved and persecuted people especially the poor and downtrodden in the society and earn favour of God,” the chief justice said.

The chief justice recalled that the 2009 national judicial policy helped reducing the backlog to a considerably small size and congratulated the judicial officers for achieving the optimum targets.

He expressed the confidence that the judicial officers would continue pursuits for bumper disposal but without slashing the cause of justice and thus delivering justice to the vulnerable segments in the society.