ISLAMABAD, Nov 18: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Thursday approved a policy for the nomination of legal advisers and placement of advocates on different panels to pursue government cases in courts.

Appointment of legal advisers, engagement of counsel and approval for placing the counsel on the panel would be finalized by a Legal Adviser's Committee which would be led by Federal Law Minister Wasi Zafar. Attorney General for Pakistan Makhdoom Ali Khan and the law and justice secretary will be members of the committee.

The policy was developed after President Gen Pervez Musharraf took serious notice of the fact that different lawsuits were lost both by the federal as well as the provincial departments because of poor quality of legal advisers and consultants earlier engaged by government departments and public sector corporations.

The president had directed that performance of all legal advisers and consultants currently employed with different government organizations, autonomous bodies and statutory organizations be reviewed and those not found up to the mark be replaced with more competent ones.

The existing list of legal advisers would also be reviewed by the committee and only those advocates who are not only competent but also command good reputation would be retained. The services of the rest of the lawyers would be dispensed with and appointments denotified, said the law minister in an official announcement.

He said only competent advocates would be considered for appointments as legal advisers and all cases to the panel of advocates would be assigned strictly on merit.

In case of any complaint against them, their appointments would be cancelled, he said.

The law division would maintain panels of advocates to contest the cases of government, autonomous bodies, statutory organizations, public sector organizations and arbitration's cases in different courts.

Without the consultation of the law ministry, no legal adviser or counsel on a panel would contest cases in any court, tribunal or any forum, the minister explained.

Similarly no government departments would pay a fee of more than Rs0.1 million as cumulative fee in connected cases without prior approval of the law ministry while no lawyer would be engaged without the consultation of the ministry.

A letter to this effect has already been issued by the law ministry to all government departments, he said.