ISLAMABAD, Feb 25: The Pakistan People’s Party and PML-N, the likely partners in a coalition government, have sought the advice of some top legal experts on ways of resolving the prevailing judicial crisis because many top lawyers and constitutional experts appear to be divided on ways of restoring the deposed judges and, even more, on the issue of the fate of the post-emergency judicial set-up.

In view of the enormity of the crisis, two mainstream parties have invited a number of senior legal experts including Fakhruddin G. Ibrahim who is reaching Islamabad on Tuesday.

“I am coming to Islamabad as both Nawaz Sharif and the PPP have asked me to help them in finding a solution,” he told Dawn when asked to comment on the issue.

After meeting the two, Mr Ibrahim said, he might also address a press conference to spell out the solution he had in mind for the political parties.

Renowned human right activist and constitutional expert Asma Jehangir already met Asif Zardari on Monday to hammer out a solution.

The crisis seems two-fold – one, how to reinstate the deposed judges who were sent home after the proclamation of the November 3, 2007, emergency, through a constitutional amendment or a simple executive order; and two, on what would become of the judges who have signed oath of loyalty to President Pervez Musharraf under the Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) promulgated along with the order imposing the state of emergency rule, and who later took a fresh oath under the Constitution after the emergency was lifted.

“Reinstatement of the pre-PCO judges should not be linked with the removal of the present ones,” observed senior legal counsel Khalid Anwar, adding that this was the most “politically-charged question”.

Mr Anwar said the correct road to take in finding a proper solution was to give a chance to the new parliament to debate and come up with a solution.

To him there could be two methods to resolve the crisis, either to let the Supreme Court decide the matter through a petition or let the legislators intervene through constitutional amendment for which a two-thirds majority in parliament would be needed.

On the one hand, he said, the lawyer’s community was saying that since the judges had been removed unconstitutionally, therefore, a simple executive order would suffice to reinstate them.

To advance this proposition, the legal fraternity is banking on an interim order issued by a seven-member bench, headed by deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, by staying the emergency rule moments after its proclamation by President Musharraf as the then army chief.

This interim order, however, got superseded by a final judgment of the Supreme Court which validated the emergency rule on the touchstone of the Zafar Ali Shah case. The doctrine of necessity invoked by the apex court in validating the emergency rule, though not liked by the people, was also affirmed when the review petition against the emergency rule was rejected by the apex court.

A senior government official confided to Dawn that one of the options which had been dwelt at length was to reinstate the judges and let them work side by side with the present ones to help reduce the huge backlog and wait during the process for the retirement age of the senior judges.