KARACHI, Jan 7: The Pakistan Bar Council has condemned the amendment made to the Legal Framework Order (LFO) on Oct 2, 2002 under which retirement age of superior courts’ judges has been raised.

A resolution to this effect was passed in the PBC’s second session, chaired by its newly-elected Vice Chairman, Mian Abbas Ahmad, here on Saturday and released to the Press on Tuesday. The first session was chaired by the Attorney General, Makhdoom Ali Khan, who is Chairman of the PBC.

The resolution appealed to the judges not to accept this ‘dubious gift’ from the military rulers and renounce the same and accept retirement honourably on attaining the age of superannuation as per the Constitution ‘unadulterated by the LFO’.

The PBC maintained that the decision had further undermined independence an credibility of the judiciary and, in the opinion of the Council, “it is an ill-gotten gain received from an illegitimate regime under an invalid and unconstitutional document in the stealth of the night.”

It said: “such an amendment, apart from being unnecessary and a violation of the settled question of retirement age under the Constitution, has incapacitated the judiciary from examining and adjudicating upon the legality and constitutionality of the LFO or any provision thereof, being the beneficiaries under the same.”

The Bar Council reiterated its previous stand: “The LFO is not part of the Constitution and its provisions cannot change or alter any constitutional provision, including the matter of retirement age of judges fixed under the Constitution.”

It said those Supreme Court and High Court judges, who continue to act as judges after attaining the age of 65 and 62 years respectively, would be regarded as usurpers by the members of the Bar and a movement would be launched for the removal of such the usurper judges.

The PBC, while approving the joint declaration, agreed upon by the representatives of the Bar Councils and political parties in their joint meeting held on Aug 17, 2002, decided that it would continue the struggle for the restoration of the Constitution and Rule of Law. It also decided that a national conference of lawyers’ representatives would be held on Feb 1 at Islamabad.

The meeting was attended by Muhammad Ashraf Wallah, the outgoing vice chairman, H. Shakil Ahmad, Hamid Khan, Sardar Muhammad Latif Khan Khosa, Hafiz Abdul Rahman Ansari, Muhammad Kazim Khan, Rasheed A. Razvi, Abdul Rahim Kazi, Abul Inam, Abdul Haleem Pirzada, Farooq H. Naek, Muhammad Yusuf Leghari, Qazi Muhammad Anwar and Qazi Muhammad Jamil (members).