December 18, 2006	Monday	Ziqa'ad 26, 1427

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LAHORE, Dec 17: Senior lawyers again go to the polls on Monday to elect the Supreme Court Bar Association leadership for 2006-7 in a situation where unprecedented developments taking place after the Oct 31 vote have not left behind pleasant memories. The re-poll, as such, is likely to make an impact on the outcome on the fresh vote.

The aftermath of the first vote certainly caused such a polarisation among the ranks of the Supreme Court lawyers fraternity as to involve the apex court in resolving the dispute emanating from the vote count and major rival groups claiming victory. The Oct 31 vote will also be remembered for establishing certain records and the most prominent of them was that the major groups refused to accept the verdict.

The Supreme Court resolved the dispute by entrusting the duty of restoring the lawyers unity to the Pakistan Bar Council which decided that a re-poll was the most amicable way-out of the crisis which had started threatening the credibility of bar elections.

Now that the PBC has been in charge of the situation, it has constituted a six-member election supervisory committee comprising senior jurists drawn from all the provinces.

The committee is headed by PBC executive committee president Syed Kalb-i-Abbas and Justice Gul Zarreen Kiyani (retired) from Islamabad, Justice Amir Alam (retired) from the Punjab, Akhtar Ali from Sindh, Zafar Abbas Zaidi from the NWFP and Raja Mohammad Afsar from Balochistan as members. The committee will meet in the Supreme Court building in Islamabad to count the vote from eight polling stations across the country to declare results through a notification.

Vice-chairpersons of provincial bar councils will conduct the re-poll as presiding officers at Karachi, Quetta, Peshawar and Lahore and the high courts bar association presidents will supervise the election at benches at Abbotabad, Bahawalpur, Multan and Rawalpindi-Islamabad in the same capacity. They will send the ballot papers sealed in a bag to the PBC committee for the purpose of count and announcement of results.

The re-poll will be between and among the same set of candidates who contested the Oct 31 election. The lawyers groups headed by former SCBA president Malik Mohammad Qayyum and Sardar Mohammsd Lateef Khan Khosa on the one hand and Hamid Khan and Chaudhry Mohammad Ashraf Wahla on the other hand are pitched in the electoral battle which is no longer a factional rivalry, but a substantial amount of bitterness added to it. The former group is supporting Raja Haq Nawaz for the office of the SCBA president while the latter is patronising Munir A Malik for the same office. The third candidate for the same office, Chaudhry Mohammad Jameel, has retired in favour of Munir Malik.

The vice-president from Sindh, Khwaja Saeed Ahmad Khan, stands elected without contest as his rival, Shaikh Faqeer Mohammad Javed, has retired. Similarly, the vice-president from the NWFP, Mohammad Saeed Akhtar Khan, also stands elected after the retirement of Abdul Lateef Yousufzai.

The contest for the SCBA vice-president from Punjab will be between Sahibzada Anwar Hameed and Nawab Saeedullah Khan and Imranul Haq Khan and Sheikh Ghulam Ahmad from Balochistan.

The contest for the office of the secretary is between Syed Zulfiquar Ali Bokhari and Mohammad Waheed Akhtar. Mr Bokhari had won the first contest by a wide margin of about 100 votes. Sardar Mohammad Ghazi has already been returned to the SCBA as additional secretary without contest. In the fresh vote, M Tariq Bilal stands elected as finance secretary after his lone rival M Zaman Bhatti retired from the contest. As many as 27 candidates are in the run for the 14-member executive committee from all the provinces.

The total number of registered voters is 1,536 of whom 1,080 are from the Punjab. The maximum number of voters is 786 and they belong to Lahore. According to the electoral list, 287 voters have been registered in Sindh, 117 in the NWFP and 52 in Balochistan.