KARACHI, June 17: The Sindh government is learnt to have decided to replace the judges of the anti-terrorist courts in the province.

Sources told Dawn on Tuesday that new judges would be inducted into all the 11 ATCs in the province very shortly.

They said the majority of the new judges would be appointed from the bar and their list was still being finalized.

Home secretary Arif Ahmed Khan told Dawn that the judges would be appointed in the ATCs where posts had been lying vacant for a long time. “The government has decided to replace some sitting judges as well,” he added.

The home secretary said that a summary for the appointment of new judges along with the names of incumbents had already been sent to the chief justice of the Sindh High Court for approval.

“Once the SHC approves the names of the incumbents, a summary will be sent to the chief minister of Sindh for his approval,” he added.

He said the appointment of new presiding officers of the ATCs was expected within 10 days.

There are 11 ATCs across the province. Of them four are in Karachi, three in Larkana, two in Sukkur and one each in Hyderabad and Khairpur.

In Karachi, ATC judges are Haq Nawaz Baloch, Ghulam Ali. A Samtio, Abdul Ghafoor Memon and Ahmed Nawaz Shaikh.

There are three ATCs in Larkana, but only one of them is functional and is headed by Judge Khan Pervaiz Chang. The posts of judges are lying vacant in the two courts.

Similarly, the post of ATC judge in Khairpur is still lying vacant.

The sources said the ATC judge at Hyderabad, Akhlaq Hussain Larik, would not be replaced.

The sources said all the candidates were lawyers belonging to the ruling Pakistan People’s Party.

The sources said the government had also decided to replace all special public prosecutors in the ATCs in the province in the next phase.

The Secretary of the Sindh Criminal Prosecution Agency, Mohammed Ishaq Lashari, however, told Dawn that there was no proposal to replace the special public prosecutors (SPPs) in the ATCs.

When his attention was drawn to the proposed replacement of ATC judges, he expressed ignorance, but added that it had even otherwise nothing to do with the appointment of the SPPs.The sources said the names for the post of SPP had already been recommended by the ruling political leadership, and the appointments were likely to be made immediately after the induction of new ATC judges.