ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Thursday accepted for hearing a set of appeals to determine the authority of the Lahore High Court’s Performance Evaluation Committee (PEC) to issue show-cause notices to several additional district and sessions judges.

The committee was constituted by LHC Chief Justice Mansoor Ali Shah to evaluate work, conduct and integrity of judicial officers of the subordinate judiciary. Subsequently, on the recommendations of the PEC, the high court issued show-cause notices to a number of judicial officers and compulsory retirement notices to many of them in October last year.

A set of 24 appeals was taken up by a special five-judge bench of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar who observed that the court would not like to suspend the LHC decision. However, rights of the judicial officers will be determined after the final outcome of the case by the top court.

The chief justice also hinted that the case might be taken up again sometime in March.

One of the petitioners — Additional District and Sessions Judge Syed Awais Ashraf Gillani — through his counsel Asma Jahangir sought a declaration that the PEC, a panel of district and sessions judges appointed by the LHC CJ, was illegal and ultra vires to fundamental rights guaranteed under Articles 4, 9, 18 and 25 of the Constitution and the Punjab Judicial Service Rules (PJSR) 1994.

The petitioner said that through a recent amendment to the PJSR, matters pertaining to promotion of the judicial officers had exclusively been entrusted to the administrative committee of the high court.

Ms Jahangir said that the PEC was a “rumour committee” which had taken quasi-judicial action of deciding the fate of the judges against which there was no remedy.

“When my client’s promotion was due, he received a notice for compulsory retirement and was posted as officer on special duty,” she said.

At the conclusion of the proceedings, the chief justice observed in a lighter vein that Ms Jahangir was like a sister to him, but what she was doing to him had been done by no one. The observation came against the backdrop of the chief justice’s recent comments about the length of women’s skirt in Karachi against which the Women Lawyers Association strongly reacted.

“One should not frown on everything all the time, rather learn taking things lightly,” the chief justice said.

Published in Dawn, January 26th, 2018