Staff Reporter :The Appellate Division on Monday served show-cause notices on two High Court judges for negatively commenting on a verdict.A four-member bench headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha issued the notices on Justice AKM Shahidul Huq and Justice Sharif Uddin Chaklader.The two judges have been asked to respond by May 11.According to sources, the duo got the show cause notice for giving reference of BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia’s case [lease cancelling of her cantonment house by Appellate Division] while delivering a verdict of a civil case in their bench over a leased house in the city’s Mohammadpur area on November 21, 2013.In the reference, they reportedly said: ‘The lease registration [of Khaleda’s house] was cancelled under an administrative order. The country’s apex court also kept the order. But there was no way to cancel the lease order in accordance with any law in the sub continent. Certainly, the order could be given by the court through any better law.’ “And for that reason, we cannot accept the verdict as a universal judgment,” the duo’s reference also said.The show cause notice on two incumbent High Court judges is unprecedented. The Attorney General or any other officer of his office refrained from making any coment on the issue. On April 8, 2009, the then Awami League government cancelled the allotment of Khaleda Zia’s house on Shaheed Mainul Road in Dhaka Cantonment, ‘due to a number of anomalies regarding the allotment within the military zone’. The decision was taken at a cabinet meeting with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair. Later, the Appellate Division on November 29, 2010 also rejected the leave to appeal petition filed by Khaleda Zia to challenge a High Court rule that declared illegal the lease of the Dhaka cantonment residence on Shaheed Mainul Road and asked her to vacate the premises. A regular bench of the Appellate Division headed by chief justice ABM Khairul Haque had scrapped the Khaleda’s petition.
