04 August 2004	Wednesday	17 Jamadi-us-Saani 1425

LAHORE, Aug 3: Senate's standing committee on law, justice and parliamentary affairs has whetted a bill aimed at amending the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act-1973 , which is likely to be moved in the upper house of the parliament by the third week of this month.

PPP's Senator Sardar Latif Khan Khosa told Dawn that passage of the bill would be no problem. Senator Khosa claimed that the bill had found favour with top treasury leaders like S.M. Zafar, Dr Khalid Ranjha, Justice Abdul Razzaq Thahim (retired) and leader of the house Wasim Sajjad, who were also eminent lawyers.

The amendment, he told Dawn, would later be moved in the National Assembly for enactment and adopted unanimously by the end of September to bring the law in conformity with the local government system and reforms in the administration of national and provincial bar councils.

The package of amendments was proposed by the Pakistan Bar Council and moved in the form of a bill in the recently prorogued Senate session by Senator Chaudhry Mohammad Anwar Bhindar. Later, a consensus was reached on the matter and it was decided that it would be adopted as a treasury bill and passed unanimously.

The bill was drafted by the Pakistan Bar Council which later sent it to the Ministry of Law and Justice. The ministry sent it to the federal government for tabling it before the legislature. The federal government decided to move it in the Senate and then secure a National Assembly vote.

Senator Latif Khosa, also a member of the Pakistan Bar Council, said the PBC took several months to draft the bill, which was necessitated by induction of a new local government system which abolished the administrative divisions forming the basis of lawyers' rolls for the purpose of election of bar councils.

The PBC subsequently worked out a comprehensive package of amendments to the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act to make it workable in the new system, Mr Khosa added.

The amendment bill proposed substitution of divisions by 'group of districts' paving the way for preparation of future lawyers' rolls on the basis of districts.

This, according to the PPP senator, was a major provision in the new Pakistan Bar Council-sponsored bill which was also aimed at removing the objection of Punjab Bar Council which was feeling reluctant in holding elections in the absence of changes in the act.

The amended law would also fix a ceiling for membership of provincial bar councils to strike down the anomaly existing in the law in view of only the membership of Pakistan Bar Council being fixed at 20.

According to Senator Khosa, the Punjab Bar Council would have a ceiling of 75 members, as against 101 at present. The number of seats would remain unchanged at 32 and 28 for Sindh and NWFP bar councils and be increased from three to five for the Balochistan Bar Council.

The amendment also provided that lawyers with a professional standing of at least 10 years would be eligible to contest for membership of a provincial bar council. The professional experience required is seven years.

The amended law would also provide for punitive action against bogus credentials, professional misconduct and other offences. Another feature of the bill, according to Mr Khosa, was that it took away powers of the courts to suspend legal licences.

This power would now rest with bar councils only. An annual budgetary provision for federal and provincial governments' grants-in-aid for bar councils, was also a feature of the new law, Senator Khosa added.