LAHORE, Nov 3: The Lahore High Court has given a piece of two kanals of land on Fane Road to the Punjab Bar Council for building law chambers.

The land has been handed over to the PBC on the order of the Lahore High Court chief justice whom council vice-chairperson Arif Chaudhry met on Monday.

The move may create another controversy because the cause of lawyers chambers on Fane Road has, for well over two decades, been pursued by the high court bar and the Punjab Bar Council has never figured in the picture in this regard.

Mr Chaudhry told Dawnthat the land had been given to the PBC because the high court bar had become a controversial body and many lawyers had lost their faith in its leadership.

He said the PBC would itself build a complex of law chambers and would allot them to lawyers on the basis of their claims. Elaborating, he said the lawyersm who were original tenants of the land, who included Syed Afzal Haider, Syed Ahmad Saeed Kirmani, Chaudhry Mohammad Ashraf and Chaudhry Mohammad Sadiq, would be given preference.

But, Mr Chaudhry hoped that almost all the affectees, a majority of whom were illegal occupants, would be accommodated as tenants of the high court. He said the PBC was a representative body and he saw no problem in the body entertaining the claims for the chambers.