LAHORE, Oct 18: The Punjab government will have to relieve all its 16 advisers as a result of the Lahore High Court decision through which their appointments were declared unconstitutional and illegal.

However, the decision allows the chief minister to retain his special assistants and also five of the six advisers.

The governor had appointed 18 advisers to the Punjab government. The court has already stopped Mian Munir and Akhtar Rasool from working.

The others on whom the axe falls are Haji Qaiser Amin Butt, Chaudhry Mohammad Mansha, Hafiz Mohammad Tahir, Dr Javed Asghar and his wife Dr Faiza Asghar, Ms Saadia Shehzad, Chaudhry Mohammad Shafiq, Rahat Ali Quddusi, Sardar Allahyar Heraj, Haji Mohammad Haneef, Shaukat Ali Laleka, Pir Syed Mukhtar Ahmad, Raja Mohammad Nasir, Mian Abdus Sattar, Farrukh Mahmood Shah and Kamil Ali Agha who is a senator and also a federal minister of state.

As for advisers to the chief minister, their number is six and the CM will have to remove one of them to meet the requirement of the law. They are: MPAs Col Shujaat Ahmad Khan (retired) from Narowal, Maj Asghar Hayat Kalyar (retired) from Sargodha, Malik Khalid Mahmood from Bahawalpur and Ms Saba

Sadiq from Lahore who was elected on the ticket of the PML-N and later defected to the ruling party. Other advisers to the chief minister are Rana Ejaz Ahmad Khan and Hafiz Mohammad Iqbal Khan Khakwani.

The number of special assistants is four and the government has the room to appoint one more. MPA from Gujranwala Dr Sohail Akhtar Cheema, Makhdoom Ali Akbar, Javed Khalid and Syed Mawahid Husain, the brother of the ruling party secretary-general Senator Syed Mushahid Husain, are in the category at present.

It may be pertinent to note that the Punjab government also moved an intra-court appeal against the decision of Justice Hamid Farooq who suspended the appointment of one more adviser during the pendency of the writ petition. He took a serious view of the appointment at a stage when the legality of the advisers appointment was already under process. The government stated that the adviser was appointed under a valid law and could not be called into question.

The LHC is also seized of an identical matter raised through a writ petition through which the Mohammad and Ahmad Law Associates’ Mohammad Azhar challenged the appointment of 172 ministers, advisers, parliamentary secretaries and special assistants on the ground that they formed the largest cabinet of the world which was a burden on the public exchequer.