LAHORE, Sept 6: The Bar-bench controversy, arising out of the incident on Friday when four lawyers beat up a Lahore High Court employee, was resolved on Saturday following a meeting of Chief Justice Iftikhar Hussain Chaudhry with the Lahore High Court Bar Association president and other senior lawyers.

LHCBA president Hafiz Abdul Rehman Ansari had claimed the other day that the CJ refused to meet him and around 100 other lawyers who went to see him in his chamber. He had also announced a boycott of the CJ’s court.

“Things have been amicably resolved and the matter is over. Neither the Bar nor the bench can afford such tension,” Mr Ansari told reporters after a two-hour meeting with the CJ. According to some insiders, the meeting had been arranged by senior lawyers to resolve the controversy ahead of the full-house meeting of the LHCBA on Monday, where the issue was to be taken up.

Mr Ansari said the dispute was discussed in a friendly environment and both the parties explained their views in detail.

When asked whether he had been assured of withdrawal of the FIR lodged against him and 18 lawyers on charges of beating up a writ branch junior clerk, Abid, and hindering the performance of the official duty of LHC registrar, Mr Ansari said: “There was no such discussion. We will have to see how things proceed in future.”

To another query regarding the full-house meeting on Monday to discuss this incident, the LHCBA president said the meeting would be convened as per schedule and apprised of the results of the meeting with CJ. He said it was up to the house to endorse the friendly gesture of CJ and bury the matter once and for all.

A senior lawyer who had attended the meeting told Dawn on the condition of anonymity that the CJ had assured lawyers that measures would be adopted to narrow down the communication gap between the Bar and the bench. The CJ had acknowledged that the LHCBA president was not required to make a prior appointment to see him. However, the decorum of CJ’s private chamber should have been honoured as 100 lawyers could not be allowed to enter the chamber.

According to the lawyer, the CJ had maintained that Mr Ansari should have filed a formal application with the registrar regarding the incident and talked to him on the issue only if the registrar did not proceed in accordance with the law.

Pakistan Bar Council member Ashraf Wahla and its executive committee chairman Kazim Khan, LHCBA secretary Muzamil Akhtar Shabbir and former Punjab Bar Council chairman Ramzan Chaudhry also participated in the meeting.