ISLAMABAD: Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry called 14 Supreme Court judges from provincial registries to the capital on Friday. They would remain in the city till further orders.

The reasons for the action remained unclear because it was taken at a time when a perceived confrontation between the executive and judiciary appeared to be easing after the judiciary showed some flexibility in its stance on the issue of transfer of a senior bureaucrat.

A source in the apex court told Dawn that the chief justice had cancelled a cause list for the week commencing on August 1 under which only two benches were constituted in the capital to hear a number of ordinary cases.

The first bench was to consist of the chief justice and Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja and the second of Justice Mian Shakirullah Jan and Justice Sarmad Jalal Osmany.

The rest of the judges were to sit on the benches in different branch registries of the Supreme Court, in Peshawar, Lahore, Karachi and Quetta.

“I am not sure but the reason behind the unexpected move could be the eerie silence in the capital, especially against the backdrop of summoning by the president of a National Assembly session on Monday to be addressed by the prime minister,” the source said, though he conceded that the unexpected move had raised alarm bells in many circles.

A similar unexpected and unprecedented assembly of Supreme Court judges was seen on Oct 15 last year when they decided to set up a 17-member bench to look into reports about the government’s hitherto unannounced plans to revert the March 16, 2009, restoration of superior court judges.