PESHAWAR, Jan 12: The deposed chief justice of the Peshawar High Court, Tariq Pervez Khan, has said that protesting lawyers should call off their movement only after the government agrees to replace all PCO-judges with fresh appointments.
Justice Tariq paid an unscheduled visit to the sessions court on Saturday.
The lawyers invited him to join them and the occasion turned into a public meeting.
Justice Tariq said that the protesting lawyers had three
options: To end their movement after the restoration of the pre-Nov 3 judiciary and judges; to call off the movement if the government agrees to replace the judges who took oath under the PCO with fresh appointments in consultation with lawyers; and, to accept their failure and end their movement.
When he proposed the third option the lawyers raised slogans and said they would not end their movement without reinstatement of the deposed judges.
He said that junior advocates had been hit the hardest in the ongoing movement as economically they were not stable as compared to the senior colleagues.
“The sacrifices of the junior lawyers will be written in golden words in history,” he said.
Justice Tariq emphasised that lawyers had not launched the movement for personal gains and said that the prime objective behind the movement was restoration of the judiciary.
He said lawyers should not lose heart if their movement had prolonged because of a delay in polls.
Pakistan Bar Council member Safeerullah Khan, former president of the PHC Bar Association, Mian Attique Shah, general secretary of the Peshawar District Bar Association, Akhter Biland, Ikramullah Khalid and Azhar Yousaf also spoke on the occasion.
They said that they could not even think of ending their movement without reinstatement of the deposed judges and release of their leaders, including Aitzaz Ahsan, Ali Ahmad Kurd and Justice (retd) Tariq Mahmood.
Meanwhile, the lawyers across the province continued boycott of courts for the third consecutive day against the detention of SCBA president Aitzaz Ahsan and other lawyers.