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Islamabad: Hundreds of lawyers rallied outside the Parliament here on Thursday demanding reinstatement of the dozens of judges deposed by former president Pervez Musharraf last year.
At one stage a section of the protesters tried to force entry into the nearby Supreme Court but police beat them away with batons resulting in minor injuries to several.
Representatives of bar associations from across the country came for the protest that showed the 10-month old campaign of the lawyer community was not likely to peter out anytime soon.
The emotionally charged lawyers chanted slogans against ruling Pakistan Peoples Party leader and presidential candidate Asif Ali Zardari, ignoring a plea by their leader Aitzaz Ahsan, who belongs to PPP, not to do so.
The PPP government has invited all deposed judges to follow the example of the 12 sacked judges who accepted reappointment and took fresh oath to resume their jobs at the high courts in Sindh and Punjab provinces.
Official sources said another sacked judge was expected to take fresh oath at the high court in Peshawar in North West Frontier Province on Friday.
However the response to the government offer has so far been limited from among around 60 Supreme Court and high courts judges whom Musharraf sent home under the emergency rule in November 2007. The lawyer community has largely rejected the mode adopted by the government to bring the judges back, contending that this amounted to accepting Musharraf's unconstitutional steps.
Addressing the lawyers in front of the Parliament, Aitzaz Ahsan said a stable democracy in the country was not possible without an independent, free functioning judiciary.
Ahsan, who is president of Supreme Court bar, said the judges who took fresh oath had hurt the lawyers movement.
The rally was the first and last by the lawyers during the current Ramadan fasting month and Ahsan said future program for intensifying the campaign would be finalised after the Eid festival early next month.
"We have laid our cause before the Parliament, and we hope it would realise the ground reality," he said.
Ahsan Iqbal, a central leader of Pakistan Muslim League-N, participated in the rally along with party workers and assured the PML-N would continue its struggle for the restoration of all deposed judges.
He said the PML-N believed in politics based on principles and that was the reason it had quit the ruling coalition after the PPP leadership failed to live up to its pledges. Iqbal appealed to leadership of formerly ruling PML-Q to withdraw their presidential candidate Mushahid Hussain Sahed in favour of PML-N backed candidate Saeeduzzamn Siddiqui, a former chief justice.
He said the PML-N was now sitting on the opposition benches and hoped that the PPP would avail the chance to take the credit of restoring thedeposed judges.
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