Law Minister Babar Awan

ISLAMABAD: The federal ministry for law and justice once again was in the limelight on Saturday for wrong reasons as one of its top officers resigned reportedly because of an alleged row with Law Minister Babar Awan, a source told our correspondent.

Senior Joint Secretary Akbar Khan Achakzai has resigned from his post because he was stopped from performing official functions because of some problem with the law minister, the source said.

Mr Achakzai, who hails from Balochistan, tendered his resignation a few days ago which was accepted on Saturday.

This is the second such resignation in the top legal wing of the federal government. The first was that Anwar Mansoor Khan, who resigned the office of Attorney General last week, accusing the law minister of being a stumbling block in carrying out the Supreme Court order of reopening $60 million graft cases in Swiss courts involving President Asif Ali Zardari.

“Due to non-cooperation and non-cooperative attitude of the law minister and the ministry of law and justice since I joined the office and especially since the present crisis, it is not possible for me to continue in that office,” Mr Mansoor had written in his resignation letter addressed to the president.

The law ministry is also without secretary since Justice (retd) Aqil Mirza went on a 15-day leave soon after submitting a report before the Supreme Court regarding measures adopted in compliance with the court’s order of sending letters to Swiss authorities for reopening the graft cases.

The government has landed itself in an unhappy situation for a lack of vision and failure of its legal team in addressing issues that confronted it over the past one year, a senior Supreme Court counsel said.

“Eversince the departure of former law minister Farooq Naek, the government has been beset by lack of proper and professional thinking in relation to the constitutional, legal and administrative issues,” he said.