Your Advocate

Q: I would like to have some advice from you on my personal issue. I appeared in the 22nd BCS exam. and passed the written exam well. I also did very well in my viva. I opted for the judicial cadre as I am a student of law and I had a long cherished dream to join the judicial service. I was expecting to be selected finally. But, unfortunately, just before the result was published, the Supreme Court stayed publication of result for appointing Assistant judges. So, we who were expecting to be appointed, are mentally very upset and devastated, who is not very unusual. I think will realise our mental condition. My question is are we any way guilty for this? If not, then who are liable? How long we have to wait ? Is there any legal option open for us to get any remedy ? What legal action we the sufferers can take against the persons liable for it ?
A. Karim,
Malibagh, Dhaka.

Your Advocate: You are a student of law and one of those brilliant students who came out successful in the 22nd BCS (Judicial) Examination but still going unemployed that too without any foreseeable prospect of being so. As a sufferer you know the causes of your sufferings better than anybody else and as such the replies are quite known to you. I suppose, the queries are made not as much for answers as for sharing the pangs of a suffering mind.
Nonetheless those are queries and I must meet them in my own way. As you are aware, in the famous Masdar Hossain's case our Supreme Court declared the creation of BCS (Judicial) cadre along with other BCS executive and administrative cadres by Bangladesh Civil Service (Reorganisation) Order, 1980, as amended in 1986, ultra vires the Constitution. Supreme Court found, amongst others, the judicial service functionally and structurally distinct and separate from civil executive and administrative services of the Republic and directed the Govt. to establish a Judicial Services Commission for recruitment to the judicial posts and to create a separate judicial pay commission. It has reaffirmed the constitutional mandate for separation of subordinate judiciary from the executive.

All the conscious citizens of the country and the legal community in particular are looking forward to seeing implementation of the directives set out in the judgement. You are aware, lawyers are still on the street, amongst others, with their demand for implementation of the separation of judiciary. Judgement in Masdar Hossain's case is passed in the 2nd day of December, 1999. Government is found taking time one after another from the Supreme Court for giving effect to the directives made in the said case. To our utter dismay, the Law Minister recently said, separation of judiciary would take further 6/7 years to be implemented which reflects the view of the Government.

You can easily feel the concern of the Supreme Court and the legal community in particular in matters of implementation of the directives made in the judgement. It is believed by many quarters that separation of judiciary is now a matter days or months. But for reasons still not clear to us the matter of such public importance is being delayed years after years. The sooner the impasse is resolved the earlier the answers of your queries would be available.