ISLAMABAD, June 11: The government took a controversial path on Wednesday to partly deal with the burning issue of deposed judges, using the new budget to increase the Supreme Court’s strength to 29 judges from 16.

But the move, on the eve of the scheduled arrival of a lawyers’ protest march in Islamabad, seemed to fit into similarly disputed plans of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) to reinstate the deposed judges without disturbing those who filled the vacancies after mass sackings in the superior courts under an extra-constitutional emergency declared by President Pervez Musharraf last November.

“(The) number of posts of judges of the Supreme Court is being increased from 16 to 29,” minister in charge of finance Naveed Qamar told the National Assembly in his budget speech.

This will mean the Supreme Court strength, fixed by a Judges Act of 1997 will be increased through a finance bill which, being a money bill, needs to be passed by only the 342-seat National Assembly to become law and, unlike ordinary bills, does not need approval of the 100-seat Senate as well.

A section of the Finance Bill tabled in the house after the announcement of the budget says: “In the Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Act, 1997 (XXXIII of 1997), in section 2, for the words ‘be sixteen’ the words ‘not more than twenty-nine’ shall be substituted and shall be deemed always to have been so substituted on the 3rd of November, 2007.”

But the new move, which came shortly after the opposition tried to raise tempers over the lawyers’ march to be calmed by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, is likely to be argued for and against both in parliament and outside.

The PPP and its partners in the present coalition government have been opposing similar moves by the previous government to made amendments in non-financial laws through the Finance Bill.

While no justification for the move was immediately available from the PPP, a Jamaat-i-Islami senator, Prof Mohammad Ibrahim, called the move a “daka” (robbery) of the rights of the upper house, where pro-Musharraf opposition parties have the majority.

Just before the budget speech, Raza Hayat Harraj of the formerly ruling Pakistan Muslim League complained of what he called a “contempt of the house” by a reported remark of the Supreme Court Bar Association president Aitzaz Ahsan that parliament was a hurdle in the way of reinstatement of the deposed judges.

The prime minister said the present one was “no rubber stamp parliament” and “that they should not take us lightly”, but he avoided commenting on reported Punjab and NWFP refusal to provide police force to Islamabad administration to deal with the lawyers’ march.