The Sindh High Court (SHC) set aside the Sindh government’s office memorandum and decision of the provincial cabinet with regard to freezing of judicial allowance of the high court and its subordinate judiciary employees and directed the government to unfreeze and release the amount of special judicial allowance to all the cadres of the SHC, its benches and circuit courts within two months.The order came on a petition of high court employees that asked the SHC to issued an order to the provincial government to notify a former chief justice’s directive for unfreezing a special judicial allowance for all cadres of officers and staff of high court and subordinate courts with effect from July 1, 2016. Nusrat Ali and others had submitted in the petition that the SHC registrar had on December 7, 2016, sent a letter to the law department for notifying then high court chief justice’s directive for unfreezing the special judicial allowance.
They said the acting law secretary moved a summary on January 20, 2017, to the chief minister through the finance secretary, who sought a legal opinion of the advocate general, but despite the advocate general’s giving his opinion, no notification had been issued by the government till the filing of the petition.They stated that such delaying acts on the part of the government, including the chief secretary and the finance secretary, showed that they were not notifying the direction of then former chief justice who was a fully competent authority in view of the rules 15 and 17 of the SHC Establishment (appointment and conditions of service) Rules 2006.The petitioners’ counsel submitted that despite the undertaking of the finance department that a special judicial allowance would be implemented from July 1, 2018 for all cadres of officers and staff of the SHC, the allowance of judicial officers and staff of district courts of the province had again been frozen by the provincial govt.
