April 23, 2008	Wednesday	Rabi-us-Sani 16, 1429

ISLAMABAD, April 22: Repre-sentatives of different bar associations said on Tuesday that if the deposed judges were not reinstated by the deadline set in the Bhurban Declaration, the Pakistan Bar Council would decide its future line of action on May 3.

Rejecting a statement by PPP co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari that he did not believe in any countdown, they said they were clear on the April 30 deadline.

Talking to journalists, newly-elected PBC vice-chairman Haji Syed Rahman, PBC executive committee chairman Rasheed A. Razvi, Punjab Bar Council vice-chairman Hamid Khan, Supreme Court Bar Association’s former president Munir A. Malik, Ali Ahmed Kurd, Lahore High Court Bar president Anwar Kamal and Lahore District Bar president Manzoor Qadir said the clock started ticking on March 31, the day the federal cabinet had taken oath.

Rejecting the formation of any committee before the tabling of a resolution in the National Assembly to reinstate the judges, they said it would be a violation of the Bhurban Declaration.

They said: “Answer to restoring the pre-emergency judiciary is very simple and judges can be brought back to their previous jobs by declaring null and void at the government level all Nov-3 actions taken by President Pervez Musharraf while proclaiming the state of emergency.”

“Reinstatement of judges should be independent of any committee or a constitutional package, in accordance with the promise made by the coalition partners in the Bhurban Declaration,” they said.

They did not elaborate their plans and said they were keeping their options open.

But they made it clear that the ‘minus-one formula’ would not be acceptable to the legal community.

The PBC announced that it had never decided in its last meeting to issue any notice to SCBA president Aitzaz Ahsan on his decision to contest the coming by-elections.

Senator Latif Khosa had reportedly said that the council had taken serious notice of Barrister Ahsan’s decision to contest by-elections as hundreds of lawyers had been deprived of the opportunity to contest the general election because of his decision to boycott it.

On the fate of the incumbent judges of the superior judiciary, they said that since no consultation had taken place with the de jure chief justice (Justice Iftikhar), elevation of all such judges was illegal in accordance with what was held in the 1996 Al-jihad Trust case.