MUZAFFARABAD: The Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) government on Tuesday notified March 22, 2021 as the retirement date of Justice Azhar Saleem Babar, acting chief justice (CJ) of the AJK high court, on attaining the age of 62 years to remove the alleged ambiguity in this regard and to frustrate a writ petition.

According to the computerised national identity card (CNIC) and salary slips of the acting CJ, his date of birth (DoB) is Feb 23, 1959. However, on his secondary school certificate (SSC) as well as the high court’s website, March 23, 1959 is mentioned as his DoB.

On Monday, a petition was filed in the high court by advocate Khawaja Aamir Ahmed through his counsel Fayyaz Ahmed Janjua, wherein he had maintained that at the time of joining [judicial] service some three decades ago, Justice Babar had entered Feb 23, 1959 as his DoB and if it was a typographical mistake he never approached any competent forum to get it corrected in accordance with what was written on his SSC.

“Now Justice Babar is using the DoB on his Matriculation Certificate as a tool to stay in this office for some more time, but at this belated stage his claim is ex-facie and liable to be discouraged in the light of the statutory provisions,” he had pleaded.

The petition was placed before the ‘impugned’ acting CJ on Tuesday who constituted a division bench, comprising senior judge Mohammad Shiraz Kiani and Justice Sadaqat Hussain Raja, to hear it. However, in the open court, Justice Kiani maintained that he could not take up this petition because of “too many complications” in it and also because being the senior judge he was the ‘next beneficiary’.

When advocate Janjua argued that in the light of an AJK supreme court judgment the ‘next beneficiary’ could hear a petition, Justice Kiani reiterated that it was not merely an issue of the ‘next beneficiary’, “but a lot of legal points and complications triggered by the petition.”

Justice Kiani recused himself from the bench in a note he sent to the deputy registrar (judicial) instead of the acting CJ.

The registrar placed the file before the acting CJ but till 3:30pm the petitioner was not informed as to what decision had been taken on it.

In the meanwhile, a notification was issued by the law, justice and parliamentary department, stating that the president had approved retirement of the acting CJ in the afternoon of March 22, 2021 on attaining the age of 62 years, on the basis of his DoB mentioned in SSC (rather than the service record).

Published in Dawn, February 24th, 2021