ISLAMABAD, Nov 5: The Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO), under which the superior court judges took a fresh oath on Saturday, is the verbatim copy of the one issued by President Pervez Musharraf in October 1999 after removing the government of Nawaz Sharif, legal experts told Dawn on Monday.

However, sources close to former Attorney-General Makhdoom Ali Khan denied that Mr Khan had authored the PCO issued by President Musharraf on Saturday.

Attorney-General Malik Mohammad Qayyum in an interview to DawnNews had neither denied nor confirmed that his predecessor had drafted the PCO.

The former AG resigned as the chief government lawyer on July 20, the day when Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry was restored by the Supreme Court after four months of suspension.