Islamabad, Nov 12: Ousted Pakistan Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry has said that the aim of the Musharraf regime’s emergency was to target the judiciary that would have been a hindrance to the former’s attempt to rig the general elections.

Chaudhry said the establishment was aware that it could not get desired result in the presence of a strong judicial set-up.

The Supreme Court, he said, had questioned the role of a particular group of opportunists in the ruling set-up and stepped in on the issue of allotment of farm houses in Islamabad that led to the imposition of emergency, the ousted Chief Justice told a private news channel.

The previous bench of the apex court would have ruled out Musharraf’s presidential candidature and convicted Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz of contempt of court in Nawaz Sharif’s re-exile case, as Foreign Secretary Riaz Muhammad Khan had told the court that the Prime Minister had asked him to arrange the plane to be used for deporting Sharif to Jeddah on September 10, Chaudhry said.

“If I have been sacked for being involved in something wrong, then what was the justification for removing other judges of the apex court, ” The Nation quoted him, as saying.

Musharraf imposed an emergency in Pakistan on November 3 and sacked Chaudhry and several other apex court judges. (ANI)