ISLAMABAD, March 12: Leaders of major opposition parties on Monday condemned the action taken by the government against Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. They also criticised the composition of the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) and said it included three judges against whom complaints were pending.

A conference of opposition parties convened by Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) president Qazi Hussain Ahmed decided to resist what was termed a planned attack on the higher judiciary by President Pervez Musharraf and to launch a countrywide agitation against the suspension of the chief justice.

The leaders who attended the ‘Qaumi Majlis-i-Mushawirat’ later marched towards the residence of Justice Chaudhry in order to meet him but were pushed back by a heavy police posse deployed at a distance of about half a kilometre from the building.

Besides the MMA chief, Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Maulana Fazlur Rahman, Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) chairman Raja Zafarul Haq and Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf chairman Imran Khan, Islami Tehrik’s Allama Jalil Naqvi, People’s Party Parliamentarians’ Nayyar Bokhari, Awami National Party’s Haji Adeel and Afrasiab Khattak, Ikram Chaudhry of the Pakistan Bar Council and former chief of Inter-Services Intelligence Hameed Gul attended the conference.

The conference decided that opposition leaders and parliamentarians would march from Parliament House to the Supreme Court on Tuesday morning to express solidarity with the chief justice and the judicial community.

A declaration adopted at the conference condemned the action of making the CJ non-functional and termed it illegal and unconstitutional and an attack on the judiciary.

It rejected the appointment of acting chief justice before a decision on the presidential reference and termed it a violation of constitutional provisions.

The declaration questioned the bona fide of the SJC saying that complaints against three of its members were pending in the same body.

The opposition reiterated its full support to the Pakistan Bar Council, Supreme Court Bar Association and provincial bar associations in their struggle for restoration of the prestige of the judiciary.

The meeting decided to form a steering committee headed by Liaquat Baloch of the MMA and comprising Khwaja Saad Rafiq, Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, Nayyar Bokhari, Haji Adeel and Hamid Khan to work out a line of action to resist the government’s ‘onslaught on the judicial system’.

It decided to requisition sessions of the National Assembly and Senate to debate the issue.