LAHORE, Oct 19: Elections to the Supreme Court Bar Association have brewed into quite a controversy when its president Qazi Muhammad Jameel tendered his resignation from the Pakistan Bar Council and put his foot down to hold the SCBA elections on Nov 26.

By taking this decision, the SCBA has come out to confront a resolution adopted by the Pakistan Bar Council’s general council calling for the elections to be held on Oct 29.

However, the PBC overruled the SCBA’s “unlawful decision” here on Wednesday and took upon itself to hold the SCBA elections on Oct 29 as ordained by the resolution, adopted at a meeting of its general council held in Lahore on Oct 15.

PBC vice-chairperson Hafiz Abdur Rehman Ansari told Dawn that the council’s executive committee, headed by Hamid Khan, would meet in Islamabad on Thursday (today) to make arrangements for the polling to be held on Oct 29. The results would be announced on Oct 31 and the new SCBA leadership would start functioning the following day.

Mr Ansari said all legal formalities for the elections had been completed and final list of candidates displayed in Islamabad and provinces. Thus there was no problem in holding the elections, he added.

According to him, the results announced by the PBC would hold the ground because the PBC, as a statutory apex body of lawyers, was competent to hold elections. He said the law envisaged that the tenure of the SCBA should end on Oct 31. The PBC had the power to take over a bar association in case it failed to hold its election within the mandatory period, Mr Ansari said.

The SCBA executive committee on Wednesday decided in Islamabad that the elections would be held on Nov 26 as decided earlier because a number of lawyers would not be able to take part in the elections in view of the massive earthquake in some parts of the country.

The PBC general council took a serious view of the deferring of the SCBA elections and, through unanimous resolution, issued the directive that elections should be completed by Oct 29 and results announced on Oct 31.

The PBC general council cited certain provisions of the law which mandated the SCBA tenure to come to an end by Oct 31.