By Islamuddin Sajid
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AA) - Pakistan top court's senior most judge, Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa, on Friday took oath as the 26th chief justice of the country.
Justice Mian Saqib Nisar retired on Thursday after serving as the chief justice for two years.
President Arif Alvi administered the oath to Khosa at the president house in the capital Islamabad. The swearing-in ceremony was aired on state-run Pakistan Television.
Prime Minister Imran Khan, judges of the Supreme Court, top military officials and federal ministers attended the ceremony.
The new chief justice will serve as the top judge of the country till Dec. 21 of this year.
- Khosa's profile
Born on Dec. 21, 1954 in Dera Ghazi Khan, a town of northeastern Punjab province, Khosa received his master's degree from the University of Punjab.
He pursued his Law degree at the Queens' College in Cambridge in 1978. He enrolled as advocate at the Lahore High Court in 1979 and then at the Supreme Court in 1985.
He was elevated as judge of the Lahore High Court in May 1998 and was later appointed as judge in the country's top court in February 2010.
During his 19-year term as judge in the high and Supreme courts, Justice Khosa heard and ruled around 55,000 cases.
He was also part of the Supreme Court bench that disqualified former three-time Premier Nawaz Sharif in the Panama Papers scandal case in 2017.
Khosa represented Pakistan in various international conferences, seminars and symposiums held in different countries including Turkey.
According to state-run Radio Pakistan, Khosa vowed to take big steps for decisions on the pending cases in the courts across the country.
"There are about 1.9 million cases pending in the different courts of the country while there are only 3,000 judges to handle such huge backlog," Khosa had said.
He added, that it is now time to take some big decisions, bring structural and systematic changes to minimize litigations and eliminate unnecessary delays.