ISLAMABAD President Asif Ali Zardari on Friday appointed 16 Additional Judges of the Lahore High Court (LHC) to make the current strength of high court judges from 36 to 52. The president also appointed seven Deputy Attorney Generals and five standing counsels to represent the federal government before the courts.

Those who have been appointed additional judges are Pervez Ali Chawla, Ms Jamila Jahanoor Aslam, Muhammad Shafqat Khan Abbasi, Mahmood Akhtar Khan, Abdul Sattar Goraya, Habibullah Shakir, Pervez Inayat Malik, Nazir Ahmed Ghazi, Syed Ihtasham Qadir Shah, Anwarul Haq Pannu, Syed Zulfiqar Ali Bukhari, Imtiaz Rasheed Siddiqui, Chaudhry Naeem Masood, Arshad Mahmood, Irfan Qadir and Jamshed Rahmat Ullah.

Pervez Ali Chawla is from the Punjab Judicial Service and was acting as registrar of the LHC before his elevation as the judge of the high court. Syed Ihtasham Qadir Shah is the son of Advocate Ehsan Qadir Shah who appeared as a counsel of late Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Similarly Irfan Qadir had served the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) as its prosecutor general while appeared as counsel of Tikka Mohammad Iqbal, on the petition of whom the Supreme Court had validated the November 3, 2007 proclamation of emergency by former President Pervez Musharraf as the then army chief.

Commenting on the appointment of new judges, a senior constitutional expert on condition of anonymity said, the government could have made better choices. The president, he said, should not have appointed all the people from his own political cadre by ignoring other sections of the bars altogether.

Meanwhile the government has also appointed seven DAGs and five standing counsel namely Khan Dil Mohammad Khan Alizai (DAG) and Robina Saeed (standing counsel) for Islamabad while Yasmin Sehgal, Abdul Razzaq Raja and Syed Iqbal Hussain Shah Gillani as DAGs and Chaudhry Mohammad Jehanzeb Wahla as the standing counsel to represent the federal government in Lahore.

Similary in Karachi Nazar Akbar, Mian Khan Malik, Syed S Ashiq Raza will appear on behalf of the federal government as DAGs while Syed Ahmed Ali Shah, Shahab Sarki and Rizwan Ali Dodani as the standing counsel.

In a separate development Sardar Ghazi has been removed from the post of DAG. He was recently appointed by the government as prosecutor to conduct the trial of the suspects arrested from Pakistan in connection with the Mumbai attack.

Soon after his appointment he had told media that the government had requested India for the physical custody of lone surviving terrorist Ajmal Qasab.

Sardar Ghazi was appointed as DAG during the period when Malik Mohammad Qayyum was the attorney general.