LAHORE, July 9: Lahore High Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Husain Chaudhry has refused to constitute high court benches at Faisalabad and Sargodha.

Sources told Dawn on Wednesday that the provincial government had recently forwarded the demand of lawyers hailing from the two districts to the chief justice. The demand was made by lawyers at a meeting with President Pervez Musharraf on June 6, which had been arranged by provincial adviser Rana Ejaz Ahmad Khan.

It was learnt that the CJ had made a “cautious” response to the provincial government, saying that “since the petitions challenging the constitution of LHC benches at Multan and Rawalpindi were still pending for adjudication, creation of two more benches would not be an appropriate step”. The petitions have been pending with the LHC since 1989.

Apart from its principal seat at Lahore, the LHC has benches at Rawalpindi, Multan and Bahawalpur, which were constituted in 1981. Over 36,000 cases are currently pending with these three benches. The 37 LHC judges are relocated by the CJ to these benches at regular intervals.

The matter regarding the establishment of LHC benches at Faisalabad and Sargodha first came up during last year’s presidential referendum when a lawyers’ faction announced to get these benches constituted in return for supporting President Pervez Musharraf in the referendum.

The demand for two new benches was based on the argument that Article 198(4) of the 1973 Constitution permitted the governor to set up as many benches of a high court as he deemed necessary in consultation with the provincial cabinet and the CJ concerned.

This demand was included by the provincial government in the Rs150 million aid package that it would offer to district bar associations under the programme announced by President Musharraf at a function arranged by the Lahore Bar Association.

Both the Supreme Court Bar Association and the Lahore High Court Bar Association have opposed this demand, saying that creation of two additional benches would further divide the judicial hierarchy and affect the centralized system of legal justice.

According to these associations, the government had used this demand of a certain faction of lawyers as a tool for winning support for Gen Musharraf on the occasions of presidential referendum and LBA gathering. They are of the view that the step would lead to more administrative problems due to unavailability of judges at the principal seat in the wake of their relocation to new benches.