MUZAFFARABAD: The Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Supreme Court on Friday “kept in abeyance” an order of the high court admitting for regular hearing six writ petitions challenging the recent appointments of five high court judges.

On May 23, AJK high court Chief Justice (CJ) M. Tabassum Aftab Alvi had administered oath to Raja Raza Ali Khan, the then advocate general, Chaudhry Mohammad Munir, the then district and session judge, and advocates Mohammad Ejaz Khan, Chaudhry Khalid Yousaf and Raja Sajjad Ahmed Khan from Rawalakot, Mirpur and Dhirkot, respectively, as high court judges — two days after their appointment was notified by the AJK law department, in accordance with an advice from the AJK Council.

However, the appointments were challenged by Muzaffarabad, Rawalakot and Mirpur based lawyers in the AJK high court through six separate writ petitions on different grounds, one of which was that the appointees were not the consensus nominees of both the chief justices and therefore the appointment notification was liable to be declared void, ineffective and of no legal effect.

A division bench of the high court comprising Justice Azhar Saleem Babar and Justice Raja Mohammad Shiraz Kiani was constituted by the high court CJ to hear the petitions.

On October 23, the bench consolidated all six petitions and admitted them for regular hearing.

The order was however challenged by the five judges in the AJK apex court on Thursday through a petition for leave to appeal (PLA), which was taken up by a single member bench, comprising Justice Raja Saeed Akram, on Friday.

Raja Mohammad Hanif, counsel for the petitioners, maintained that all six writ petitions were in fact writs of quo warranto and “the settled law in this regard required the court to first determine the bona-fide of the petitioners.”

He claimed that he had proved with the help of record [during arguments] before the high court bench that “each petitioner had challenged the appointments with mala-fide intention but his point was not taken into consideration.”

He directed that notices should be issued to the respondents and PLA should be fixed for hearing in the first week of December.

Published in Dawn, November 10th, 2018