Profile: Justice (retd) Nasirul Mulk

Justice Nasir-ul-Mulk, who has been appointed as the caretaker premier, has served as the chief justice of Pakistan along with working on other important posts.

Mulk, who has also served as the interim chief of Election Commission of Pakistan, will be heading the government until the general elections as the incumbent setup will be dissolved soon.

He was born on August 17, 1950, in Swat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and has served as the 22nd Chief Justice of Pakistan taking oath after Tassaduq Hussain Jillani retired from the post.

Justice Nasir-ul-Mulk was a barrister-at-law of the Inner Temple, London. He was elected as secretary general, Peshawar High Court Bar Association in 1981.

In 1993, he was appointed as the advocate general of KP, formerly known as North-West Frontier Province. A year later, in 1994, he was appointed as the judge of Peshawar High Court.

He was elevated as chief justice of Peshawar High Court on May 31, 2004, and as a Supreme Court judge on April 4, 2005.

Justice Mulk was one of the seven judges who signed a restraining order on November 3, 2007, when former president General (retd) Pervez Musharraf imposed emergency and forcibly sent the judges home.

He later joined the judiciary on September 20, 2008, under the Naek formula when he took a fresh oath as a judge of the Supreme Court with his seniority intact.

The new interim chief minister is also the one who authored the verdict favouring former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s in the plane hijacking case. The verdict paved the way for Nawaz to return to politics.

The retired judge also headed the seven-member bench that convicted former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gillani for not writing a letter to the Swiss authorities to reopen graft cases against then president Asif Ali Zardari. After the verdict, Gillani was disqualified as the prime minister.

Moreover, Justice Mulk headed the commission formed to probe the allegations of 2013 polls being rigged.