KARACHI: Senior judge of the Supreme Court of Pakistan Justice Gulzar Ahmed took the oath as the acting Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) on Saturday.

Justice Mushir Alam administered the oath to the acting CJP at a simple ceremony held at the Karachi registry of the Supreme Court.

The incumbent CJP, Justice Asif Saeed Khosa, is on a visit to the United Kingdom.

Several judges of the apex court — namely, Justice Maqbool Baqar, Justice Munib Akhtar and Justice Sajjad Ali Shah — attended the oath-taking ceremony.

Judges of the Sindh High Court, including Justices Aqeel Ahmed Abbasi, Faheem Ahmed Siddiqui, Mazhar Alam and Abdul Malik Gaddi, were present on the occasion. Prominent office-bearers and members of the Sindh High Court Bar Association and Karachi Bar Association also attended the event.

The union of the Cambridge University had invited CJP Khosa to deliver a speech, according to a press release of the Supreme Court. That was why he was on a visit to the UK on Saturday, sources said.

The press release said that CJP Khosa did his Tripos and LLM at the University of Cambridge, before being called to the Bar at the Lincoln’s Inn, London.

He happens to be the first Pakistani to have been invited by the Cambridge University Union to deliver a speech in its history of 200 years. The luminaries invited in the past by the union include Sir Winston Churchill, Presidents Roosevelt and Reagan, the Dalai Lama, Stephen Hawking and Margaret Thatcher. The guests invited this year include the prime ministers of Malaysia and Nepal, according to the press release.

Published in Dawn, June 9th, 2019