KARACHI, Dec 3: Newly-elected president of the Sindh High Court Bar Association Rasheed A. Razvi has called for the removal of all barricades and law-enforcement agency personnel from the Sindh High Court entrance.
In a letter addressed to the SHC registrar and the provincial home secretary and faxed to newspapers, he said the SHC premises had remained ‘virtually under siege’ since Nov 5. He recounted the various occurrences involving humiliation and maltreatment of lawyers since the imposition of emergency and said free access of lawyers, litigants, citizens and the media to court premises was essential for administration of justice.
He said the administration’s highhandedness as detailed by him amounted to contempt of court but no action had been taken ‘for the sole reason that the court had been deprived of its 17 most senior judges’.
Mr Razvi, who is a member of the Pakistan Bar Council, was elected SHCBA president on Dec 1. He polled 718 votes against 335 secured by Ms Ismat Mehdi. Incumbent secretary Munirur Rahman was reelected by an even wider margin. Z.K. Jatoi was voted vice-president and Ms Tayyaba Jabeen joint secretary. Sarwar Mohammad Khan was elected treasurer unopposed.
The nine lawyers elected members of the management committee for 2008 are Adnan Ahmed, Manzoor Ahmed, Zahida Khatoon Naqvi, Mohammad Safdar, Majid Noman Khan, Shafaat Hussain, Khalid Hameed, Mohammad Aslam Chowdhry and Azizuddin Qureshi.
Bar poll challenged
A senior lawyer has challenged the composition and election of the Sindh High Court Bar Association.
Advocate Shakeel Ahmed claimed in his petition that the association had on its rolls a large number of non-practising lawyers in violation of its own articles and memorandum of association and the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act, 1973. The election held by it was vitiated by the unlawful voters’ list, he contended.
The petition was briefly taken up on Monday by a division bench comprising Justices Yasmin Abbasy and Mahmood Alam Rizvi and was adjourned for further preliminary hearing on Tuesday.
