ISLAMABAD, April 3: The Supreme Court on Thursday said it would conclude hearing of over 700 cases pertaining to the recruitment of over 1,000 persons, who were inducted in the Sui Southern Gas Company Limited during the Benazir government but were shown the door by the next government of PML-N.

The Chief Justice of Supreme Court has constituted a five judges special bench to decide all the petitions, civil appeals, and review petitions filed by the affected persons. The bench is expected to pronounce authoritative pronouncement on the issue which is lingering on from last many years.

The judgment would decide whether the person inducted in the SSGC as trainee engineers and management trainees, were SSGC employees or not.

The court has so far heard prominent counsels like Wasim Sajjad, Abid Hasan Minto, Mohammad Akram Sheikh, Abdul Hafeez Pirzada, and Iftikhar Gillani for the petitioners and Chaudhry Jameel for the SSGCL.

The court was informed by of the counsel representing petitioners, that the company had spent so much on the legal fee, which would have not been the salary bill of the petitioners.

The SC bench consists of Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, Justice Qazi Mohammad Farooq, Justice Rana Bhagwandas, Justice Deedar Hussain Shah and Justice Hamid Ali Mirza.

Chaudhry Jameel argued that the judgment of the FSTl, which was under challenge in SC, was not a judicial verdict, as one member of the FST bench was not competent to sit on the bench.