KARACHI, Nov 30: The ordinance amending the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act is incapable of being enforced uniformly, Sindh Bar Council executive chairman Abrar Hasan argued before the high court on Tuesday.
Without going into the merits and demerits of the new amendments, he pointed that the NWFP Bar Council has already held its elections for the next four-year term under the un-amended law and rules and in accordance with its strength determined by the old formula.
The provincial bar councils constitute the electoral college for the Pakistan Bar Council polls. "The whole regulatory edifice of the legal profession would be based on an uneven application of law", he submitted before a division bench of the Sindh High Court, comprising Justices Sarmad Jalal Osmany and Amir Hani Muslim.
Arguing against the ordinance, promulgated on Nov 3, Advocate Ghulam Shabbir Shar said the strength of the bar councils and electoral districts had been arbitrarily determined for good.
It did not relate to the number of lawyers practising in a particular district from time to time. The number of seats allocated to the Khairpur district, for instance, had been reduced from two to one.
Another district with the same number of lawyers had been allowed to retain its quota of two seats. The provision was discriminatory and was hit by Article 25 of the Constitution, he argued on behalf of petitioner-lawyer Liaquat Ali Shar of Khairpur.
Deputy Attorney-General Nadeem Azhar Siddiqui, earlier, defended the president's power to promulgate an ordinance. The only condition was that the parliament should not be in session. The pendency of a bill on the same subject was no clog on the president's power, he said. The hearing was adjourned to Wednesday.
