LAHORE, Nov 26: Ms Fakharun Nisa Khokhar, who retired as a Lahore High Court judge on June 27 this year, has decided to run for the office of the LHCBA president.

She will be pitched against Khwaja Saeeduz Zafar, a former deputy attorney-general, who announced his candidature soon after losing this election to Mr Ahmad Awais last year.

Ms Khokhar will be the first high profile woman jurist to enter the bar politics after Rabia Sultan Qari who presided over the Lahore High Court Bar Association in 1964-65. She sustained grievous injuries in a lawyers' clash with police during PNA's agitation in 1977 and died later.

The emergence of Ms Khokhar on the bar's political scene will make the next contest for the LHCBA tough and interesting as she will be joining the camp of lawyers who are campaigning for democracy, independence of the judiciary, rule of law and the restoration of the constitution as it stood before the military takeover on Oct 12, 1999.

Many behind-the-scene moves made the former judge agree to contest the bar elections as she seemed reluctant in the beginning to enter the bar politics because of a number of reasons.

The 'Professional Group' of lawyers which has senior lawyers and Pakistan Bar Council members Hamid Khan, Senator Sardar Mohammad Latif Khan Khosa, Ahmad Awais and Hafiz Abdur Rehman Ansari in the lead, is said to have played a major role in making her agree to contest.