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Islamabad: Eight deposed judges of the Sindh High Court yesterday became the first of some 60 superior court judicial officials sacked by former president Pervez Musharraf to return to their jobs.
The Pakistan Peoples Party government secured Musharraf's approval for the reappointment of the judges before his resignation on August 18 but delayed their reinduction apparently at the behest of the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), which later pulled out of the ruling coalition accusing the PPP leadership of not honouring its pledges.
The PML-N had long sought the restoration of all the dozens of Supreme Court and provincial high court judges sacked by Musharraf on November 3, 2007, when he imposed emergency rule.
The judicial development in Sindh is a pointer to the government's inclination to use the reappointment route to restore deposed judges at the Supreme Court in Islamabad and at the high courts in the provinces.
Several other deposed judges in Sindh have still not accepted the reappointment offer.
A top official of the Sindh law ministry said the offer was open to all deposed judges and it was up to the judges themselves to decide on it.
Reconciliation noises
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani had said while addressing reporters on Tuesday that all deposed judges would be reinstated but had declined to say whether the reinstatement would take place before or after the presidential election scheduled for September 6 and how the government intended to go about it.
Gilani had said the PPP would request PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif to rejoin the coalition once the judges had been reinstated.
Atahr Minallah, a spokesman for deposed former Supreme Court chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, said reappointment implied acceptance of Musharraf's illegal and unconstitutional sacking of judges. The PML-N had been demanding a National Assembly resolution and an executive order to seal the judges' reinstatement.
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