ISLAMABAD, Nov 19: Official sources have denied as incorrect a news item appearing in Dawn on Sunday, headlined; “Proposal to raise judges retiring age rejected.”

They maintained that no proposal to raise the age of superannuation for a judge of the Supreme Court to 68 and for a judge of the High Court to 65 or to make the office of the Chief Justice of Pakistan a tenure post, was prepared or floated by the law ministry, either at the “insistence of a judicial authority” or otherwise. As no such proposal was ever prepared by the law ministry, the question of its being turned down by the competent authority simply did not arise.

Linking the statement made by the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Justice Irshad Hassan Khan, on Saturday in Peshawar that he would be laying down the robes of his office in the first week of January, 2002, with the rejection of the proposal of the ministry by the competent authority, was false, completely without foundation and unfortunate.

The chief justice has consistently been of the view that no increase in the age of superannuation of the judges of the Supreme Court would be made during his tenure.

The statement made by him at Peshawar while attending the stone-laying ceremony of the Peshawar Registry of the Supreme Court was in consonance with this view, which he firmly holds.