LAHORE, June 9: The Lahore High Court is taking up on Thursday the writ petition of the Watan Party, which challenges the elevation of five judges to the high court. The petition seeks an injunction declaring the appointment of judges, which was notified on Feb 26, 2002, as illegal and malafide.

Another request is that the court should itself order the promotion of judges from among the district and sessions' judges on the basis of their seniority. The petition, filed through Barrister Zafarullah Khan, has submitted that Justice Pervez Ahmad (since retired), Justice Chaudhry Iftikhar Husain, Justice Farrukh Latif, Justice Sakhi Husain Bokhari and Justice Rustam Ali Malik, all district and sessions judges, were promoted in violation of the seniority consideration.

It submitted that all these judges had been working as presiding officers of accountability courts at the time of their promotion in Feb 2002, which was a reward for convicting two former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, besides several other political leaders.

The promotion also contravened the Supreme Court's decision in the Al-Jihad Trust case (PLD 1996 SC 324), which declared that appointments to the higher judiciary must be transparent and made on open merit of which seniority was a major feature.

Another point raised in the petition was that the constitution provided for the elevation of judges to the high courts from among the lawyers and no government in the past had taken care of this obligation.