LAHORE, May 19: The Punjab Bar Council has opposed the move to empower the Lahore High Court to take disciplinary action against offending lawyers, saying it will undermine the jurisdiction of the council and lead to legal anomalies.

PBC executive committee chairperson Pervez Inayat Malik and member Anwarul Haq Pannun said on Wednesday if the move was approved, the authority of the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act, 1973, to enrol new entrants, grant them licences and initiate disciplinary action against the offending lawyers would be eroded.

"The empowerment of the high court may open new avenues of confrontation between the bench and the bar," the two PBC leaders said in a press release. They said the PBC or any of its committees could not be held responsible for delay in deciding the cases of new enrolment and taking disciplinary action because such issues were adjudicated by committees headed by high court judges.

According to them, the PBC's enrolment committees and misconduct tribunals were not meeting frequently and delay of weeks, if not months, was caused mainly by unavailability of the high court judges. A misconduct tribunal last met in January this year and about 300 cases for disciplinary action were still pending with the tribunal for this reason.

Mr Malik and Mr Pannun said the PBC had constituted three enrolment committees and as many misconduct tribunals, but only one judge was heading the former and another was presiding over misconduct cases.

Instead of undermining the role of the PBC, they argued that steps should be taken to implement the provisions of the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act. They appealed to the government not to consider the LHC's proposal to amend its rules without taking members of the bar councils into confidence.