LAHORE, Feb 7: Asghar Ali Gill from Lahore and Tahir Mahmood Mufti from Bahawalpur were on Monday elected as the vice-chairperson and chairperson, executive committee, of the Punjab Bar Council in a close contest.

Monday's election launched the new 75-member council for the next five years. The two office-bearers said they would appoint the leaders and members of the PBC's 15 committees with mutual consultation. For this they were given a mandate by the general house through a unanimous resolution.

Mr Gill who belongs to the Hamid Khan group, polled 39 votes against 36 by Mr Mohammad Arif Alvi from Multan who enjoyed the support of the group headed by Chaudhry Mohammad Ashraf Wahla and Mohammad Ramzan Chaudhry.

Tahir Mahmood Mufti, fielded by the independent group of sitting vice-chairperson Chaudhry Tanvirur Rehman Randhawa, bagged 40 votes to defeat his only rival Zafar Mahmood Mughal from Rawalpindi nominated by the Wahla-Chaudhry group.

A major surprise, the results are an outcome of the last-minute joining of hands by the strong Khosa group with the Hamid Khan camp. Till Sunday, the Khosa group has been part of the alliance with the Wahla-Chaudhry group.

For the Wahla-Chaudhry faction, it was double blow as the independent group also deserted it at the eleventh hour.

The new alliance of the Hamid Khan, Khosa and independent groups emerged only on Monday morning when the Wahla-Chaudhry group informed the two hitherto allies that it had already nominated Arif Alvi and Zafar Mahmood Mughal for the office of vice-chairperson and executive committee chairperson.

The two were "taken aback" as to how an ally could take decision without consulting others in the alliance. Later, the Hamid Khan group made a "lucrative" offer to the two groups in a situation that they had no option except to accept the offer.

The offer made was that the Hamid Khan group would support the candidature of Tahir Mufti for executive chairperson and accommodate the members of the Khosa group in the 15-member PBC committees. In the bargain it wanted the two groups to support Asghar Ali Gill in the election for vice-chairperson.

Nevertheless, the fight which the Wahla-Chaudhry group put up single-handedly in one of the closest Punjab Bar Council elections in the recent history is by all means a threat to the fragile new alliance which came into being for electoral expediency alone without working out a long-term strategy and principles to guide such a conglomerate. The group has not given a breathing space to the new alliance which has to do a lot of tight-rope walking in the future bar politics.

ASGHAR GILL: The new PBC vice-chairperson Mohammad Asghar Gill, who relieved Tanirur Rehman Randhawa, told the council's general meeting soon after the elections that continuity of the lawyers' struggle for democracy and the welfare of the fraternity were his main areas of priority. He said that his success was the victory of 40,000 lawyers of the province who were working in the most unfavourable conditions.