LAHORE, Oct 6 The Lahore High Court (LHC) registrar on Tuesday received show cause notices issued by the Supreme Court to 26 sitting, retired and removed LHC judges for taking oath under the Nov 3 Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) in violation of a restraining order passed by a seven-member bench of the apex court on the same day.

Registrar Tahir Pervez told Dawn that his office after receiving the notices also posted them to the judges on their available addresses.

The judges to whom notices were issued also include former LHC chief justices, Justice Sayed Zahid Hussain, who is a judge of the Supreme Court, and Justice Chaudhry Iftikhar Hussain (retired).

The other judges are Justice Mian Najam-uz-Zaman, Justice Maulvi Anwarul Haq, Justice Muhammad Khalid Alvi, Justice Fazal-e-Miran Chohan, Justice Syed Shabbar Raza Rizvi, Justice M. Bilal Khan, Justice Syed Asghar Haider, Justice Hasnat Ahmad Khan, Justice Sakhi Hussain Bokhari, Justice Syed Hamid Ali Shah, Justice Sajjad Hussain Shah and Justice Tariq Shamim.

These 12 judges are still working and likely to face proceedings under Article 209 of the Constitution before the Supreme Judicial Council.

Six retired and seven removed judges of the high court have also been issued contempt notices.

The retired judges are Justice Iftikhar Hussain Chaudhry, former LHC chief justice, Justice Sardar Muhammad Aslam, Justice Mian Hamid Farooq, Justice Muzammil Khan, Justice Hakam Ali and Justice Sheikh Javed Sarfraz.

While the removed judges include Zubdatul Hassan, Zafar Iqbal Chaudhry, Khawaja Farooq Saeed, Akram Qureshi, Khurshid Anwar Bhindar, Saifur Rehman and Ali Hassan Rizvi.

Meanwhile, sources told that a group of PCO judges had a meeting on Tuesday night at the residence of Justice Syed Shabbar Raza Rizvi to reach some unanimous line of action.

One of the participants of the meeting quoting views of his fellows said that most of them vowed to contest their positions by filing replies to the show cause notices instead of resigning from their offices.