PESHAWAR: As part of the ongoing process to add more judges to the Peshawar High Court, members of the Judicial Commission of Pakistan (JCP) have proposed 31 applicants, including three judicial officials, for consideration.
The nomination of judges to the Peshawar High Court is also on the agenda for the JCP meeting that is set for December 21.
Any JCP member may nominate someone for appointment to the commission in order to fill any vacancy in the superior courts, whether it be real or anticipated, in accordance with Article 175-A of the Constitution.
Three district and sessions judges (DSJs) and six attorneys are among the nominees put forward by the chief justice of PHC, the JCP secretariat formally informed its members.
Three district and session judges and six attorneys are among the PHC chief justice’s nominees.
Ms. Farah Jamshed, Inamullah Khan, and Kaleem Arshad Khan are the DSJs.
Kaleem Arshad Khan, a native of Dera Ismail Khan, was named an additional district judge in 2005 and is scheduled to retire in November 2027.
Mr. Inamullah Khan and Ms. Jamshed are from Bannu and Mansehra, respectively, and they are scheduled to retire in September 2027 and January 2030. They had both become civil judges when they joined the judiciary in 1994.
Barrister Syed Mudasser Amir, Qazi Jawad Ehsanullah, Junaid Anwar, Aurangzeb, Salahuddin, and Sadiq Ali—who is now the vice head of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Bar Council—are the attorneys that the chief justice has nominated.
Amir Javed, a former KP advocate general and extra attorney general, and Tariq Afridi, a former president of the PHC Bar Association, are among the attorneys nominated by Akhtar Hussain, the Pakistan Bar Council’s nominee in the JCP.
In a same vein, Munir Hussain Laghmani, the KPBC nominee on the panel, has proposed three attorneys: Bakht Jamal Khan, Mohammad Rafique, and Muhammad Ali Khan.
Mian Abdul Fayaz, a former PHCBA president, has been nominated by Senator Azam Nazeer Tarar, the federal law minister, to serve as a high court judge.
Eight nominees, primarily from Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, have been named by the KP law minister. Alam Khan Adenzai, Ghulam Mohammad Sappal, Syed Sikander Hayat Shah, Mohammad Inam Khan Yousafzai, Kausar Ali Shah, Abdur Rauf Khan Afridi, Mohammad Bashar Naveed, and KP advocate general Shah Faisal Uthmankhel are among these nominees.
Advocate Sardar Ali Raza has been nominated by MNA Sheikh Aftab Ahmad. Senator Farooq H. Naek has also nominated him. Mr. Raza is a renowned attorney and the son of Justice Sardar Mohammad Raza Khan, a retired senior judge of the Supreme Court and former chief election commissioner.
Syed Shakil Ahmad Gillani, Nasir Mehmood, Bilal Ahmad Durrani (a former KPBC member), Ms. Ayesha Malik, a former vice president of PHCBA and executive member of the SC Bar Association, and former assistant attorney general Mansoor Tariq are the other five names that Senator Farooq Naek provided.
Barrister Gohar Ali, the chairman of the PTI and a member of the commission, has proposed Ms. Raheela Bibi, a female Supreme Court advocate.
In a same vein, Ms. Roshan Khursheed Barucha, another member, has only provided one name for Atif Ali Khan, a former additional advocate general.
Ihstiaq Ibrahim, the Chief Justice, is one of the 13 judges currently serving at PHC. Just two of these 13 judges are employed by the government.
The PHC currently lacks a female judge because Musarrat Hilali, the chief justice at the time, was promoted to the Supreme Court.
The federal law ministry announced in September 2024 that the president of Pakistan had raised the number of PHC judges from the previous 20 to 30.
A senior advocate nominated by the PBC, two members from the Senate and the National Assembly, a woman or non-Muslim to be nominated by the NA speaker, the chief justice of Pakistan as its chairperson, the three most senior judges of the Supreme Court, the most senior judges of the constitutional benches, the federal minister for law and justice, and the attorney general for Pakistan make up the JCP, which was established after the Constitution (Twenty-sixth) Amendment Act was passed.
Additionally, when appointing a high court judge, the JCP must comprise the head of the high court’s constitutional benches, the chief justice of the relevant high court, the province law minister, and a senior attorney chosen by the relevant bar council. If the clause pertaining to high court constitutional benches had not taken effect, a senior puisne judge from the court would have become a member of the commission.
