ISLAMABAD, Feb 5: A special bench of the Supreme Court will take up over 350 cases pertaining to recruitment in the Sui Southern Gas Pipelines Ltd.

Sources said the special bench, headed by Justice Rana Bhagwandas, would also look into details of expenditures the company has made on the litigation after expelling those who were recruited during the second Benazir government.

Also, the bench would take up the pending appeals filed by the SSGPL and the dismissed trainees.

The litigation started in 1998 when the Nawaz Sharif government started expelling about 1,700 persons who were recruited in 1994-95.

The trainees were not regularized when the government which had recruited them was in power. And after the change of the government, services of majority of them were terminated.

The terminated employees first tried to get relief from the court under its writ jurisdiction, but failed. They then approached the Federal Service Tribunal which ordered reinstatement of many, but declined the same relief to many others.

On the last hearing, the Supreme Court had directed the company to place on record the money it had spent on litigation in the last five years.