January 6, 2003	Monday	Ziqa’ad 2, 1423

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ISLAMABAD, Jan 5: The government has agreed to administer a fresh oath to the judges of the superior courts after receiving reports that members of the judiciary want a fresh oath after the revival of the Constitution.

A top legal aide of the government told Dawn that though the chief justice of Pakistan had not formally conveyed to the government that the members of judiciary were in favour of fresh oath, it had been informally conveyed that the members of the judiciary were of the view that there should be no doubt about the issue of their oath.

Sources said it was expected that the chief justice after consulting all the judges who would assemble at the principal seat at Islamabad after spending about a month at their home stations, would formally write to the government that the judges should be administered a fresh oath.

The government, it may be recalled, had asked the judiciary to itself decide the issue of oath and if it was of the view that a fresh oath was needed, the government would have no objection in this regard.

The government aide whose main job is to maintain a liaison with the superior judiciary, said that the government was of the view that there was no need for fresh oath even to those judges who were inducted into the judiciary during the last three years, as there was a deeming clause in the Legal Framework Order. But if the judiciary was still of the opinion that a fresh oath was needed, the government would not oppose them.

The source pointed out that the Supreme Court Bar Association had also adopted a resolution at its recent meeting, demanding fresh oath to the judges.

The Bar association was of the view that if the judges were not administered a fresh oath after the revival of the Constitution, it would result into a constitutional crisis.

The SCBA had also rejected the government argument that in the presence of a “deeming clause” in the LFO, there was no need for a fresh oath.

The SCBA President, Hamid Khan, maintains that there could not be a “deeming clause” with regard to the oath. If it was possible to have a deeming clause about the oath, then the military government would not have taken the

trouble of asking the judges to take a fresh oath under the PCO three years ago, and it would have simply issued an order that all the judges would be deemed to have been working under the PCO.

Six judges of the Supreme Court, including the then chief justice had to leave as they refused to take fresh oath under the PCO.

Besides the Bar associations, the opposition parties are also demanding a fresh oath to all the judges who had taken oath “to abide by the provisions of the proclamation of Emergency of the Fourteenth day of October, 1999, and Provisional Constitutional Order No 1 of 1999.”

There are a total of 18 judges in the Supreme Court, including an ad hoc judge. Only the Chief Justice, Shaikh Riaz Ahmad, and the senior puisne judge, Justice Munir A. Sheikh, had taken the oath under the Constitution as well as under the Provisional Constitutional Order. The remaining judges have taken the oath only under the PCO.

A large number of judges have been inducted into the high courts during the last three years, who are only familiar with the oath under the Provisional Constitutional Order.

The Supreme Court Bar Association also expressed its reservations over administration of oath to President Pervez Musharraf by Chief Justice Shaikh Riaz Ahmad, who himself, it said, had not taken the oath under the Constitution.