LAHORE, Sept 5: The Pakistan Lawyers’ Forum has claimed that Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar is not the constitutional chief justice of Pakistan (CJP) because the chief of army staff on Nov 3 passed an order for his appointment as the CJP without having any power to do so under the Constitution.

The claim was made in a letter the president Advocate AK Dogar wrote to Law Minister Farooq H Naek. “Hence, the so-called orders made by an incompetent authority lack the attribute of legitimacy, which is one of the essential characteristics of a valid law,” the lawyer quoted Justice Hamoodur Rahman.

Addressing the law minister, he said, the law minister had a point in asserting that the unconstitutional removal of the judges of the Supreme Court could not be set right through another unconstitutional act of restoring them through an executive order and he has been insisting that these judges could be restored through a constitutional amendment only. “But the devious mode of re-appointing the judges is again unconstitutional,” he added.

He said Justice Dogar was not validly appointed CJP and in his presence the entire Supreme Court was not constitutionally functioning. Remember that Justice Sajjad Ali Shah was removed after three and half years of his service on the similar ground, he recalled.