September 13, 2006	Wednesday	Sha'aban 19, 1427

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LAHORE, Sept 12: Advocate Tariq Aziz has moved the chief justice of Pakistan in a petition requesting that the Supreme Court should take a suo moto notice of the Lahore High Court’s plan to directly recruit about 100 civil judges.

The senior lawyer stated in the petition that the Punjab Public Service Commission alone was competent to make recruitments of the gazetted officers through a process of written test and interview. On the other hand, the LHC

was planning to make such recruitment from amongst the lawyers on the basis of interviews only.

He contended that such a process would deteriorate the standard of the subordinate judiciary in which civil judges played a pivotal role. The criteria set by the LHC for the selection of civil judges was also prone to nepotism and political interference in the selection process.

He requested the chief justice to restrain the LHC from going ahead with its plan which was bound to vitiate the very foundation of the country’s judicial system.

REPLY SOUGHT: Justice Khwaja Muhammad Sharif of the Lahore High Court on Tuesday sought within one week reply from the prison authorities on the allegation that they were not allowing the members of convicts Shabbir Ahmad alias Shabbira Fauji and Syed Ghulam Raza Naqvi families to meet them.

The court issued notice to the prison department in the hearing of writ petitions through which the wives of the two convicts, who belonged to the defunct Sipah-i-Muhammad, stated that they and other bona fide members of their families were not being allowed to meet them in Kot Lakhpat Jail.

They stated that the jail authorities had been denying them the legal right for more than a week.