ISLAMABAD, Dec 6: Caretaker Law Minister Syed Afzal Haider said on Thursday that superior court judges who had not been offered or who had not taken the oath under the Provisional Constitution Order had neither been dismissed nor had “they relinquished their offices”. Rather, they had “ceased to hold their respective offices”, he added.

Talking to Dawn, he said the real difficulty being faced by the legal team of the government was to coin a proper term to describe the real status of the judges who had not taken the oath under the PCO, adding that the law ministry neither wanted to call these judges as deposed, removed, dismissed nor to say that they had relinquished their posts.

Mr Haider said the ministry would just say that the judges had ceased to hold offices -- a phrase which did not exist in the government service rules.

The minister indicated a desire to devise some legal instrument for pension benefits for the judges who had “ceased to hold offices” under the PCO.

When contacted, Advocate Naseer Ahmed Chaudhry said nothing about the retirement benefits for these judges, but recalled that a special law called Judges Pensionary Benefit Order 2000, Chief Executive Order No II of 2000 had been issued when the then six judges of the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Saiduzzaman Siddiqui, Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid, Justice Wajihuddin Ahmed, Justice Kamal Mansoor, Justice Mamoon A. Kazi and Justice Khalilur Rehman Khan, had refused to take the oath under the first PCO promulgated by then Chief Executive Pervez Musharraf soon after the Oct 12, 1999, military coup.

About the status of Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, Justice Rana Bhagwandas and others, the caretaker law minister said that under the Nov 3 PCO, Judges Oath Order of 2007 read with Nov 10 judgment of the Supreme Court validating the emergency, the position that had emerged on Nov 10 was that the judges who had not been offered oath or they had not taken the oath shall immediately be deemed to have ceased to hold their respective offices and could not have performed their functions or exercised the judicial powers because they had ceased to be judges on November 3.

That is why, he said, a number of notifications had been issued from Nov 3 onward till Dec 3, including the one under which 24 superior court judges had ceased to hold their offices.

OFFICIAL RESIDENCE: Justice Rana Bhagwandas, Justice Mian Shakirullah Jan, Justice Sardar Mohammad Raza Khan, Justice Nasirul Mulk and Justice Ghulam Rabbani have received copies of the letters regarding the allotment of their official residences to newly-elevated judges of the Supreme Court.