PESHAWAR: A Peshawar High Court bench on Wednesday upheld the condition of two years practice as high court lawyer for the candidates for 120 posts of civil judges-cum-judicial magistrates.

Justice Qaiser Rasheed and Justice Irshad Qaiser dismissed six identical petitions filed by scores of candidates, who were declared ineligible for sitting the examination to be conducted by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Public Service Commission (PSC) in Feb for the posts in question.

The lawyers for the petitioners had said the PHC had invited applications to fill 77 vacant civil judge posts in 2013 and their client had applied for it, but they were declared eligible for the examination to be held for those posts.

Many candidates had challenged requirement of two years practice as high court lawyer

They said in the meantime, the Supreme Court ruled that the posts of civil judges should be filled through PSC and not by the high court.

The lawyers said another advertisement was issued by the PSC in Oct 2015 seeking applications for 120 vacant positions of civil judge/judicial magistrate/Alaqa Qazi but with different eligibility criteria.

They said the PSC had set the condition of two years’ experience of the high court for the lawyers who wanted to apply for the posts.

They added that as per the first advertisement issued by the high court, the petitioners were declared eligible for these posts, but they became ineligible in the fresh PSC advertisement as they had not completed their two years’ experience as high court lawyer.

They argued that placing such like condition was in violation of the said judgment of the Supreme Court and it would render around 2500 of the candidates disqualified for appearing in the examination.

KP Advocate General Abdul Lateef Yousafzai argued that the provincial government was fully empowered to include certain condition for eligibility of candidates. He stated that the impugned condition was included for the candidates with the consent of the high court and thus the government had not violated any law.

INTERIM RELIEF EXTENDED: A bench consisting of Chief Justice Mazhar Alam Miankhel and Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth extended until further order the interim relief earlier granted to Abdul Wali Khan University’s Vice Chancellor Dr Ihsan Ali of stopping the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, from arresting him in a case of the alleged illegal appointment of 700 people to the university.

When the bench took up for hearing the case it was informed that the petitioner’s counsel Qazi Mohammad Anwer had gone to appear in cases before the Supreme Court and therefore, he could not turn up in the high court.

The court had on Dec 10 granted interim relief to Dr Ihsan Ali in a writ petition filed by him. In the said order the court had asked the petitioner to cooperate with the NAB in the said case.

The petitioner has challenged issuance of call-up notice to him by the bureau in the said case.

Dr Ihsan Ali, a known archeologist, was earlier arrested on Sep 15 by the NAB along with several other academicians in a case of misusing authority by giving affiliation to an illegal medical institution in Abbottabad. He was granted interim bail by the high court in that case on Sept 23.

Published in Dawn, January 28th, 2016