LAHORE, Dec 14: President Pervez Musharraf on Friday appointed nine additional judges of the Lahore High Court (LHC) for a period of one year and eight of them took oath under the Nov 3 Provisional Constitution Order (PCO).

LHC Chief Justice Iftikhar Husain Chaudhry administered them oath at a ceremony where the independent media was not invited and the official media only covered it.

Among those who took oath are Justice Saifur Rahman Khan, who was Okara district and sessions judge (D&SJ), Justice Ali Hasan Rizvi, (Gujrat D&SJ), Justice Zubdatul Hasan (Member Inspection Team of LHC), Justice Khwaja Farooq Saeed, (Income Tax Tribunal chairman), Justice Khurshid Anwar Bhindar (additional advocate-general), Justice Chaudhry Zafar Iqbal (deputy attorney-general), Justice Chaudhry Saghir Ahmad (state’s standing counsel in Multan) and Justice Akram Qureshi, who was a practicing lawyer from Lahore.

Justice Mazhar Husain Minhas, Gujranwala D&SJ, could not take oath as he had gone to Saudi Arabia to perform Haj.