ISLAMABAD, Sept 21: Judicial selection board of Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Friday recommended the names of 20 candidates for filling 20 vacant posts of civil judges of the federal capital’s sessions court.

Out of 20 selected candidates for the civil judge-judicial magistrate, 11 belong to Islamabad Capital Territory, 2 each to Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Balochistan and one to Fata.

Six females are also among the 20 selected candidates.

The Islamabad-based candidates included Shaukat Rehman Khan, Umer Shabbir, Riffat Mehmood Khan, Shuaib Bilal, Sanam Bokhari, Mohammad Naveed Khan, Mohammad Azhar Nadeem, Ayesha Shabbir, Ambreen Iqbal, Saqib Jawwad and Raja Farhat Ali Khan.

Mujahid Rahim and Mohammad Bashir Hassan are from Punjab, Mohammad Adnan Jamali and Shaista Khan belong to Sindh, Rabia Batool Malik and Shahzad Khan come from KP and Malik Amman belongs to Fata.

The three-member judicial selection board, comprising two IHC judges Justice Riaz Ahmed Khan, Justice Mohammad Anwar Khan Kasi andregistrar IHC Niaz Mohammad Khan, sent the names of 20 candidates to the IHC Chief Justice Iqbal Hameedur Rehman for their appointment as civil judge-judicial magistrate in BPS-17.

It may be mentioned here that National Testing Service (NTS) after conducting exam of about 1,000 candidates for the 20 posts of civil judges had declared 252 as qualified.

The selection board carried out interviews of all the successful candidates from Monday to Tuesday and finally sent the recommendations to the IHC CJ on Wednesday.

After the induction of these 20 civil judges, the strength of IHC subordinate judiciary would be doubled.

Earlier, about 25 judges of the subordinate judiciary were at the IHC strength.

On September 12, nine additional sessions judges have been appointed in the sessions court and after the appointment of these 20 civil judges the number of subordinate judiciary would reach to 54.

According to Islamabad Judicial Service Rules 2011, there would be 104 judges for both the sessions division – East and West – of Islamabad as well as for the 11 special courts.