Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani resigned on Wednesday as a judge of the Lahore High Court, telling President Asif Ali Zardari in his resignation letter that his conscience "does not permit me to continue" because the changes Pakistan's government has pushed through the constitution have handed the executive growing control over the courts. He also cited personal reasons, including health concerns following a recent surgery. He was not due to retire until February 10, 2032 — he is walking away more than five years early.
The letter names the Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh Constitutional Amendments directly. "However, in my considered view, the changes introduced through the Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh Constitutional Amendments have compromised the independence and institutional integrity of the High Courts," he wrote. "I have witnessed what I regard as the executive's growing control over judicial institutions, extending to the appointment and transfer of judges. Such interference has, in my assessment, seriously eroded public confidence in judicial independence and the fairness of the judicial process." He turned then to the people the system exists for: "Of particular concern is the plight of the ordinary litigant, who is the principal stakeholder in the justice system, yet whose suffering continues to deepen." The needs of those seeking justice, he wrote, have too often been neglected, while other actors have become "the beneficiaries of a system intended to serve them."
He called it "a painful decision", one that reflects his conviction that judicial office must remain inseparable from independence, fidelity to the Constitution and the protection of human dignity. Serving at the Islamabad High Court and the Lahore High Court had been a privilege, he wrote — years that "remain among the most meaningful and fulfilling of my life", in which he disposed of more than 23,000 cases while endeavouring "to uphold the Constitution, safeguard fundamental rights, and administer justice without fear or favour".
Kayani's own career ran straight through the machinery his letter condemns. Elevated to the Islamabad High Court in December 2015, he rose to senior puisne judge — the court's second most senior judge, in line to become its chief justice. In April, the Judicial Commission of Pakistan, acting on a proposal initiated by Islamabad Chief Justice Sardar Sarfraz Dogar and voting by majority, transferred him to Lahore under the Twenty-seventh Amendment's new transfer regime, which no longer requires a judge's consent to be moved. At Lahore he was placed twelfth on the seniority list, was given no division bench at the principal seat, and days before he resigned a new duty roster for November and December sent him to sit alone at the court's Rawalpindi registry.
The collision had been building for years. In March 2024, Kayani was one of six Islamabad High Court judges who wrote to the Supreme Judicial Council alleging that intelligence agencies were interfering in judicial work — pressure applied through the abduction and torture of judges' relatives and secret surveillance inside their homes. On the bench he made his name on enforced-disappearance cases: hearing the case of the abducted poet Ahmed Farhad in 2024, he summoned the defence secretary and the sector commanders of the ISI, MI and IB to appear in person, ordered missing-persons hearings to be live-streamed, and declared the poet an enforced disappearance until he reached home safely. When judges were transferred into Islamabad in 2025, Kayani and four colleagues challenged the moves and their chief justice's administrative powers in the Supreme Court; a constitutional bench upheld the transfers three to two, and an appeal by the judges was still pending when he resigned. Two of the three judges transferred alongside him in April — Babar Sattar and Saman Rafat Imtiaz — had signed the 2024 letter with him.
He is the fourth judge of the superior judiciary to resign in the amendments' wake. Supreme Court Justices Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and Athar Minallah quit within hours of the Twenty-seventh Amendment becoming law in November 2025 — Shah calling it "a grave assault on the Constitution" — and Lahore High Court Justice Shams Mehmood Mirza followed, the first high court judge to go. The Twenty-sixth Amendment, passed in 2024, gave parliament and the executive a bigger hand in choosing judges and the chief justice. The Twenty-seventh created a Federal Constitutional Court above the Supreme Court to take over constitutional cases, and rewrote the transfer rules so judges can be moved between courts without their agreement. Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf alleges that the Shehbaz Sharif government, backed by Chief of Defence Forces Field Marshal Asim Munir, has used the amendments to concentrate power in the executive and military leadership. The legal profession has fought the same battle from the other side: the Islamabad Bar Council called the April transfers "prima facie, lacking transparency", the Lahore Bar Association has asked the Supreme Court to strike the transfer regime down as leaving the judiciary "a subservient institution to the executive", and the Lahore High Court Bar Association said the Twenty-seventh Amendment had "divided the higher judiciary into pieces".
No acceptance of the resignation had been announced, and neither the government, the Judicial Commission nor the Lahore High Court had publicly answered the letter, so what happens to the cases listed before his Rawalpindi bench has not been stated. Barrister Maleeka Bokhari bid him farewell as "one of Pakistan's finest judges", saying his courage on the bench will not be forgotten. Kayani closed his letter by thanking his teachers, fellow judges and family, and set out where he goes next: "I, therefore, consider that the time has come for me to lay down my robes and return to legal practice, through which I intend to continue serving the people, protecting their rights, and promoting legal awareness."
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