LAHORE, Nov 24: The Punjab Bar Council has prescribed a written test for enrolment of lawyers.

According to a resolution adopted by the PBC general body meeting on Saturday, trainee lawyers shall have to clear a written test in a maximum of four attempts within a period of two and a half years of submission of their intimation forms. They will also pay a fee of Rs300. The requirement of six-month apprenticeship will stay.

At present, trainee lawyers submit enrolment applications after six months of training with senior lawyer. They have to submit a list of 10 cases each in which they assisted their seniors and clear a viva voce test before their enrolment.

Details of the entry test are to be worked out by the PBC legal education committee headed by Zahid Husain Bukhari. The new enrolment procedure will take effect from August, 2002.

Punjabi moot: The World Punjabi Conference held in Lahore earlier this year was a purely private affair and the government had nothing to do with it at any level, according to comments submitted in the Lahore High Court by the provincial government and the Lahore divisional commissioner, since redesignated as the district coordination officer.

The federal government had already washed its hands of the international gathering on the Punjabi language and literature in response to a notice issued by Justice Chaudhry Ijaz Ahmad, who is hearing a petition filed by Advocate M.D. Tahir.

The petition says that objectionable slogans and remarks were made at the officially-sponsored conference.

However, while the divisional commissioner said the petitioner should file a complaint before a competent authority or court of law if he was aggrieved by any proceedings at the conference so that a detailed inquiry could be held, the reply filed by the home department on behalf of the Punjab government said the utterances made at the conference did not call for a judicial inquiry.

The conference should have commenced with recitation from the Holy Quran, it said, but added that ‘such misdeeds are not actionable under law’.

The court has asked the petitioner to file a rejoinder, if any, to the respondents’ replies for further proceedings in his petition.