PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Bar Council’s enrolment committee has dismissed applications of sacked judicial officers who were seeking restoration of their licences as practicing lawyers.
The committee chairman, Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth, and its two members Muhammad Ijaz Sabi and Noor Alam Khan dismissed the applications.
The seven sacked judges of district judiciary, including Safeer Qaiser Malik, Rashid Rauf Swati, Manzoor Qadir Khan, Abdul Hakeem Hashmi, Qaiser Rahim, Adil Akbar Khan and Shah Hussain had applied for restoration of their licences as practicing lawyers after their services as judicial officers were terminated on charges of misconduct and corruption.
The enrolment committee stated in its decision that as per section 28-A of Legal Practitioners and Bar Council Act, 1973, a person shall be disqualified from being admitted as an advocate if any court dismissed or removed from service of government or of a public statutory corporation on a charge involving misconduct or moral turpitude or convicted for a moral turpitude by a court or has been declared a tout and such declaration has not been withdrawn.
“Regarding the discrimination, the licences resumed to Alam Zeb Khan and Shakeel Azam Awan advocates were in the year 2001, whereas section 28-A has been inserted through amendment in 2005 and thus discrimination with them cannot be claimed,” the order stated.
In view of the above findings, it said the applications for resumption of licences due to removal from service or misconduct charges stand dismissed.
In reply, it said, the applicants submitted that they had been removed simply without showing and specifying the nature of allegations levelled against them.
They submitted that removal due to absence of knowledge about allegations could not be termed as any offence and thus Section 28A of the Legal Practitioners and Bar Council Act could not apply on them.
The former judges argued that since they were already enrolled with the KP Bar Council much before 2005 whereas section 28 A was inserted in the act after their enrolment; under the established law, no retrospective effect could be given to a punitive and rights taking away provision.
The former judges said that the matter was sub-judice as their appeal against the termination order was also before the Service Tribunal
The Pakistan Bar Council’s executive committee had earlier set aside the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Bar Council executive committee’s order of not restoring the licences of the seven sacked judicial officers and sent their applications for practicing licences to its enrolment committee for decision in a month.
The PBC body, which met with its Chairman Mohammad Ahsan Bhoon in the chair, also ruled that if the decision on the applications of the seven appellants was not made within the stipulated time, their licences would be considered restored provisionally until the final decision of the KP Bar Council enrolment committee or the Judicial Services Tribunal, whichever happened earlier.
The KP Bar Council’s executive committee had rejected the applications of the seven sacked judges onSeptember 9, thus refusing to restore their licences to practice law, which they challenged in the Pakistan Bar Council.
The Pakistan Bar Council then remanded back the case to KP Bar Council’s enrolment committee and directed it to decide the applicationswithin one month.
It may be mentioned that in April 2017 the Peshawar High Court (PHC) removed 13 judges of the district judiciary from service for misconduct and violating disciplinary law.