Reporting snapshot · 28 October 2026 (Asia/Karachi). The letter is a private document; the passages set out here are those printed by Dawn, Geo News and The Express Tribune on 28 October. The acceptance of the resignation, the Supreme Court's proceedings on the 27th Amendment and the position of the courts may all move before any of this is settled.
What happened
Lahore High Court Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani resigned on Wednesday, 28 October, in a letter addressed to President Asif Ali Zardari, citing personal reasons including health concerns following a recent surgery and “reasons of conscience”, Dawn reported. Geo News and The Express Tribune published the same letter the same day, each holding a copy.
Kayani wrote that the changes introduced through the 26th and 27th Constitutional Amendments have “compromised the independence and institutional integrity of the high courts”, and that he had “witnessed what I regard as the executive’s growing control over judicial institutions, extending to the appointment and transfer of judges”. Such interference, he said, had “seriously eroded public confidence in judicial independence and the fairness of the judicial process”. He singled out “the plight of the ordinary litigant, who is the principal stakeholder in the justice system, yet whose suffering continues to deepen”, and said the needs of those seeking justice had too often been neglected while other actors had become “the beneficiaries of a system intended to serve them”. His conscience, he wrote, “does not permit me to continue on the bench”; he would lay down his robes and return to legal practice.
He said he had disposed of more than 23,000 cases during his service at the Islamabad High Court and the Lahore High Court. He was due to retire on 10 February 2032, so the resignation comes years early. The Express Tribune noted that Kayani, elevated to the Islamabad High Court bench in December 2015, was known for rulings on human rights and enforced disappearances, and had been a vocal critic of the 27th Amendment.
The letter is the outcome of a transfer process that began in April. The Judicial Commission of Pakistan, chaired by Chief Justice of Pakistan Yahya Afridi, approved Kayani’s transfer from the Islamabad High Court to the Lahore High Court by a majority vote on 28 April 2026, alongside the transfers of Justice Babar Sattar to the Peshawar High Court and Justice Saman Rafat Imtiaz to the Sindh High Court, according to the commission’s official handout, as Dawn reported. Geo News reported the same decision and that the proposal had been initiated by Islamabad High Court Chief Justice Sardar Sarfraz Dogar. The handout also decided that any vacancy arising from a transfer “shall be filled through transfer only” and “shall not, in any manner, be treated as a vacancy for initial appointment”.
Kayani took up work at the Lahore principal seat in May, Dawn reported. Dawn’s report on the resignation said the Supreme Court’s constitutional bench had upheld the transfers to the Islamabad High Court, including that of Justice Dogar. Kayani and three other senior Islamabad High Court judges had already approached the Supreme Court in person to challenge the administrative powers exercised by their own chief justice, Dawn reported in September 2025.
The resignation came days after a reshuffle of the Lahore High Court duty roster for November and December 2026 moved him to a single bench at the Rawalpindi registry, Dawn reported, a posting well short of the principal seat in Lahore.
Two details of his position remain unsettled between accounts. Dawn placed him 12th on the Lahore High Court’s seniority list, while The Express Tribune put him second in seniority at the Islamabad High Court before the transfer and tenth at Lahore. The two also differ on timing: Dawn dates his move from Islamabad to April, when the commission approved it, while The Express Tribune’s report of the resignation says he was transferred in May, the month he began work at Lahore.
Why it matters
Kayani’s letter puts a serving judge on the record against the transfer power that moved him, almost a year after the amendment he cites was enacted. President Zardari gave assent to the 27th Constitutional Amendment on 13 November 2025 after the Senate passed it by 64 votes to four, Dawn reported. The amendment, The Express Tribune explained, amended Article 200 to remove the requirement of a judge’s consent before transfer and to empower the relocation of high court judges between provinces on the recommendation of the Judicial Commission.
Judicial departures over that amendment had already begun. On 14 November 2025, Dawn reported that Kayani and Justice Imtiaz had told advocates in open court that other judges would take their cases from December, as the amendment empowered the commission to transfer judges without their consent. The next day, Dawn reported, Justice Shams Mehmood Mirza resigned from the same high court, the first judge of any high court to leave after the amendment, saying he could not continue in good conscience; the Lahore High Court Bar Association said the amendment had “divided the higher judiciary into pieces”.
The April transfers were contested from the start. The Islamabad Bar Council called them “prima facie, lacking transparency” and warned that “selective transfers undermine judicial independence”, Dawn reported. On 30 April 2026 the Lahore Bar Association moved the Supreme Court against the 27th Amendment itself, seeking a declaration that the transfers of the three judges were unconstitutional and arguing that Article 200 as amended had left the judiciary “a subservient institution to the executive”, Dawn reported. The bar’s argument that appointments, transfers and removal of superior court judges fall within the basic features of the Constitution is the argument Kayani’s letter now makes from the bench.
The wider institutional picture has been unsettled for much of the year. Justice Munib Akhtar was sworn in as acting Chief Justice of Pakistan on 16 October 2026, and President Zardari had to approve high court judge appointments to end an impasse in August. In January, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s chief minister had urged Islamabad lawyers to stand up for an independent judiciary, warning that those whose conscience is “even one per cent alive” would stand against the 26th and 27th amendments.
What is still uncertain
The letter is addressed to the President, and no acceptance has been announced, so Kayani’s status is unchanged. The court has said nothing about what happens to the matters listed before his single bench at the Rawalpindi registry.
The government, the Judicial Commission and the Lahore High Court had not published a response to the letter by the time of this report, and no minister had come forward to defend the amendments Kayani named.
Whether other judges follow is the wider question. The 27th Amendment’s transfer regime remains before the Supreme Court in the Lahore Bar Association’s petition, and Kayani’s letter adds a voice from inside the bench to arguments that until now came from bar associations. His letter proposes no legal remedy: Article 200 can be changed only by Parliament, and nothing in it commits the government to a change.
