ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Bar Council’s Vice-Chairman Khushdil Khan and PBC Executive Committee Chairman Muhammad Masood Chishti, along with others, have sounded alarms over the upcoming meeting of the Judicial Commission of Pakistan (JCP) to promote Justice Ayesha A. Malik to the Supreme Court from the Lahore High Court.
The PBC and other associations have announced that they would boycott all the court proceedings if the meeting went ahead and Justice Ayesha was promoted ahead of three other senior judges. This is not the first time that the bar councils have stood up against Justice Ayesha’s elevation to the supreme court. Her appointment had to be postponed four months ago as well due to a lack of consensus.
Khan clarified that the bar associations were not targetting Justice Ayesha on the basis of her gender, rather it was questioning as to why the Chief Justice of Pakistan Gulzar Ahmed felt the need to elevate Justice Ayesha, who’s fourth in the seniority line, ahead of others. He also asked why another woman judge Justice Mussarat Hillali of the Peshawar High Court, who is senior to Justice Ayesha, was not under consideration for elevation.
It is pertinent to mention here that should Justice Ayesha be elevated to the apex court, she would become the first woman judge in the country’s history to enter to Supreme Court.