The Commission has launched a call for applications to fill three vacant positions at CHI and five at HCB
ISLAMABAD:
In what appears to be the first such exercise since its inception, the Judicial Commission of Pakistan (JCP) has started conducting interviews with candidates appointed as judges of higher courts.
A seven-member JCP committee, headed by Justice Syed Hassan Azhar Rizvi, on Monday interviewed 27 candidates for appointment as additional judges of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) and the Balochistan High Court (BHC).
The commission had called for applications to fill three vacant posts at the IHC and five at the BHC.
A total of 20 candidates were proposed for the BHC and seven for the IHC by members of the Judicial Commission.
The seven-member committee interviewed all candidates and finalized its recommendations for each candidate.
The committee spent approximately 15 to 20 minutes interviewing each candidate. Each committee member shared their evaluation of each candidate before a final decision was made by majority vote.
JCP members are learned to agree that candidates under the age of 45 are unlikely to be approved for appointment as judges. However, there is no constitutional bar preventing a lawyer under the age of 45 from being appointed as a judge of the High Court.
One of the candidates said The Express PK Press Club that the committee asked about reported judgments attached to his performance.
Two candidates said the committee asked them why they wanted to become superior court judges.
Sources said The Express PK Press Club that the committee concluded that some candidates did not meet the standards required for judicial appointment.
However, the majority of the candidates proposed by the two chief justices were found suitable for appointment.
A senior lawyer said there was a need to assess the independence, integrity and courage of the nominees, adding that current circumstances required judicial nominees to be sensitive to issues related to civil liberties.
“If judges are to be appointed to the constitutional courts of Pakistan, they must be independent and competent. To achieve this, you need to hunt heads and persuade them to join the judiciary,” he said.
Before the passage of the 26th Constitutional Amendment, the Parliamentary Committee on Judicial Appointments conducted interviews with candidates for higher courts.
This is the first time that representatives of all stakeholders – the judiciary, the executive and the legislature – have come together to question candidates for judicial appointments.
The committee is expected to interview the candidates nominated for the posts of judges in the Sindh High Court today (Tuesday).
