Inside Report – Superior Judiciary negotiating for extensions with Government

Inside Report – Superior Judiciary negotiating for extensions with Government

As they continue to order against civil promotions and the appointments of various high officials around the country by the Government, the higher judiciary is reported to have begun negotiations in order to extend the term of service for superior court
judges.

The age of retirement at the moment for a High Court judge is 62 while it is 65 for the Supreme Court, but according to inside reports, moves to extend that by another three years are underway by pressurising the democratic government.

At a time when lawyers are blaming the judicial setup for not inducting working lawyers as superior court justices, the judiciary is moving towards keeping their seats for another number of years, which just seems unfair to the thousands of potential candidates
for the job.

What the surprising part is that the higher judiciary is not looking for a permanent extension, but only for those who are present justices at the moment including Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

Not adhering to the order of the courts desires could mean trouble for the civilian government as they would obviously increase the already immense pressure by pursuing cases which are in no favour of the public in any way.

In order to save themselves from the extended arms of the judiciary, the government would be forced into accepting their wishes and granting the potentially three-year long extension.

Instead of bringing up candidates on the basis of merit, many lawyers around the nation are frustrated at how the judiciary has been dealing with the issue of appointments as many at a time are from a single law firm.

It is well known that the last time the Lahore High Court sent a list of approval for candidates; many belonged to a law firm full of influential lawyers who had approaches within the system, leaving out the hard working professionals within the fraternity.

Extending the term of office for judges of the superior courts would certainly give birth to a number of questions and thus should not be done in order to keep a system running and not changing it for a few.

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Posted by Syed Hassan Bokhari on Feb 27 2012. Filed under Editorial, Opinion, Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry