ISALAMABAD, Oct 3: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Wednesday issued notices to 11 serving and retired judges of the superior and subordinate courts in a petition challenging their eligibility for allotment of plots in the federal capital.

The court clubbed the appeals of Federal Government Employees Housing Foundation (FGEHF) against the entitlement of judges and adjourned the matter till a date to be fixed by the registrar office.

In the appeals to the IHC division bench of Justice Noorul Haq N. Qureshi and Justice Mohammad Azim Khan Afridi, the FGEHF has challenged the August 5, 2010, order of Lahore High Court’s Justice Chaudhry Mohammad Tariq in which, while deciding the petitions of the 11 judges, he had directed the foundation to provide the benefit of government housing schemes to the officials directly or indirectly working with the federal government.

The FGEHF adopted before the court that Justice Saghir Hussain Qadri, Justice Syed Mohammad Farooq, special judges Safdar Hussain Malik, Mohammad Aslam, Ghulam Hussain Awan, Mohammad Aslam Khan, Mehboob Ilahi, Qamar Sultan, Manzoor Ahmad; retired judges Manzoor Mirza and Mazhar Minhas were from the judicial service department of LHC and were working on deputation with the special courts.

FGEHF counsel Mohammad Asif told the court that the judges had wrongly assumed that they were the serving judges of the federal government as Islamabad also fell in their territorial jurisdiction at the time when FGEHF launched a housing scheme in Sector G-14, and applied for the plots reserved for the officials of the federal government in 2004.He pointed out that the special courts were covering the jurisdiction of federal capital and the petitioners under a wrong impression had applied for the plots. As a result, the FGEHF turned down their applications, he added.

The judges then filed a petition with the LHC which decided the matter in their favour.

The counsel requested the court to set aside the LHC judgment.

According to petitions of the judges, at the time of allotment of the plots, they were serving in the special courts meant for the territories of Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Chakwal and Jhelum.

The petitions said their services were at the disposal of the federal ministry of law and justice and the notifications for their appointments were also issued from the law ministry.