Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani has resigned as a judge of the Lahore High Court (LHC), ending a judicial career that began at the Islamabad High Court in 2015 and took a turn when he was transferred to Lahore in April. Sources told Geo News that he stepped down for “personal reasons,” and no official explanation has been published. The development is still unfolding.

Kayani was appointed to the Islamabad High Court (IHC) in December 2015, and until recently he was its senior puisne judge, expecting to be elevated to chief justice. In April, the Judicial Commission of Pakistan (JCP) approved his transfer, along with that of other judges, from the IHC to the LHC, reportedly by a majority vote. The transfer reduced his place on the seniority list to 12th, a considerable drop from his position at the top of the IHC’s list.

The context matters because the transfers have been a source of controversy. Justice Sardar Muhammad Sarfraz Dogar was transferred from the LHC to the IHC, alongside two other judges from the Sindh and Balochistan high courts, which prompted Kayani to challenge the inter-high court transfers. The Supreme Court’s constitutional bench upheld the transfers, and Justice Dogar is now the IHC’s chief justice. The decision, however, led to a wider legal dispute. According to Dawn, Kayani and other senior IHC judges approached the Supreme Court to challenge the administrative powers exercised by Chief Justice Dogar, alleging that the office had become a “monocracy” in which judges could be excluded from the roster at will.

Dawn reported on Tuesday that the LHC’s duty roster for November and December assigns Kayani to a single bench at the Rawalpindi registry. He had returned to the twin cities following a reshuffle at the LHC, but the roster did not give him a division bench, despite his seniority and his earlier role as the IHC’s senior puisne judge. The newspaper noted that the roster was issued while his challenge to the inter-high court transfers was still pending. His resignation was reported the next day, on Wednesday. The sources did not link the two, and it would be speculative to draw a causal connection without a statement from Kayani himself.

Kayani was already one of the more prominent judges in the country. In March 2024, he was one of six IHC judges who wrote to the chief justice of Pakistan, in his capacity as head of the Supreme Judicial Council, raising allegations of interference by intelligence agencies in judicial matters. That letter prompted suo motu proceedings in the Supreme Court and became one of the most debated episodes in the judiciary’s recent history.

A judge’s resignation is formally a personal decision, and the phrase “personal reasons” is common in such cases. It also leaves much unsaid. In February 2024, another LHC judge, Justice Shahid Jamil Khan, resigned for personal reasons nearly four years before his superannuation, a precedent that shows such departures are not unusual but also that the stated reasons often fall short of a full explanation.

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Several questions follow. What will happen to the petition Kayani filed with other senior IHC judges at the Supreme Court, and will it continue without him? Will the resignation affect the broader challenge to the administrative powers of the IHC chief justice? How will the judiciary and the bar react to the loss of a senior judge who had been expected to rise to the top of the IHC? And will Kayani himself speak publicly about his reasons?

For the legal community, the resignation arrives at a time when the structure and independence of the higher judiciary are under debate. The transfers, the seniority rankings and the roster-setting powers of chief justices have all been the subject of argument within the courts and the bar. Whether this episode is read as a purely personal decision or as part of that larger discussion will depend on what Kayani, the Lahore High Court and the Judicial Commission say in the coming days.

Compiled by the Weekly PK Legal Desk.