ISLAMABAD: Senior members of the legal fraternity have criticised plans to appoint retired justices as ad hoc judges of the Supreme Court. On Saturday, both Asma Jahangir and Ahsan Bhoon slammed the Judicial Commission’s (JC) proposal.

“Do not recycle retired judges in the Supreme Court,” Ms Jahangir, a veteran rights activist, said. She was commenting on reports that the JC may consider, in its Dec 3 meeting, re-hiring two retired judges of the Supreme Court for a one-year term, in an apparent attempt to cope with a heavy backlog.

The judges being considered for reappointment are retired Justice Tariq Pervez — a former chief justice of the Peshawar High Court — and retired Justice Arif Khilji. Justice Pervez retired on Feb 14, 2013 whereas Justice Khilji achieved superannuation on April 11, 2014.

There had been consistent and unanimous resolutions from the Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) and different bar associations, Ms Jahangir recalled, that decried the tradition of appointing retired justices as ad hoc judges.

Asma Jahangir, PBC representative say move would threaten judicial independence

This practice should be discontinued, since it undermines the image of the judiciary and also impinges upon the cherished concept of judicial independence, she said, adding that a judge who had held political office after retirement should never be brought back to the judiciary.

This was a reference to Justice Pervez, who had served as the interim Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) chief minister ahead of the 2013 general elections and a former member of the Judicial Commission.

Ms Jahangir said that if the Supreme Court was having difficulty finding high court judges to elevate, they could always opt for members of the bar.

There is a lot of anguish and heartburn among members of the bar who were asking for this practice to be abandoned, since it took many years of persuading the superior courts to discard this practice in the first place.

PBC’s Executive Committee Chairman Mohammad Ahsan Bhoon echoed this sentiment in a statement, saying that the legal fraternity had grave concerns against the appointment of ad hoc Judges to the Supreme Court. He said that any such move would severely undermine the independence of the judiciary.

He also reminded the JC about a number of PBC and SCBA resolutions opposing such appointments, adding that the reappointment of judges who had retired must not be encouraged.

This practice had dragged down the image of the Supreme Court in the past, he said and urged the JC to reverse its decision.

The issue of ad hoc judges surfaced earlier when a full court meeting of the Supreme Court headed by then chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry adopted a proposal to extend the tenure of former ad hoc judge, retired Justice Khalil Ramday on Feb 14, 2011. But the judiciary had to drop the idea in view of stiff resistance from the legal fraternity.

Soon after the full court meeting, then PBC vice chairman Akhtar Hussain had convened an emergency meeting of lawyers to reject the proposal.

The resolution had pointed out that the appointment of ad hoc judges had been frowned upon by judgments of the apex court and such appointments were not likely to be a solution to the obstacles the Supreme Court was facing.

Published in Dawn, November 29th, 2015