February 13, 2008	Wednesday	Safar 05, 1429

LAHORE, Feb 12: Lawyers’ move to ensure the boycott of proceedings before judges of the Lahore High Court (LHC), who took oath under the Nov 3 Provisional Constitution Order (PCO), continued unabated here on Tuesday as they repeated Monday’s action of making their peers abandon the courtrooms on the second consecutive day.

The lawyers, under the leadership of LHCBA President Firdous Butt and Secretary Sarfraz Ahmad Cheema, started gathering outside the courts on Tuesday morning and accused their colleagues appearing in courts of abandoning what they called the community’s cause of an independent judiciary.

Lahore Bar Association president Manzoor Qadir and advocates Mansoor Ali Shah, Salman Akram Raja, Shams Mahmood Mirza, Raja Zulqarnain, Ziaullah Khan and Hayee Gillani were also present.

Some of the lawyers, led by LHCBA office-bearers, started visiting courtrooms to implement the boycott call given by the Pakistan Bar Council in a lawyers’ convention on Saturday in Islamabad. They visited the courtrooms of Justice Maulvi Anwar-ul-Haq, Justice Mian Najam-uz-Zaman, Justice Abdul Shakoor Paracha, Justice Hasnat Ahmad Khan and Justice Tariq Shamim and forced their colleagues not to plead their cases while chanting slogans of ‘boycott, boycott’.

The lawyers remained peaceful and stuck religiously to their slogans and vacating the courtrooms. When they moved towards the courtroom of Justice Ahsan Bhoon, they came across another group of lawyers, who argued against what they called “singling out of Justice Bhoon”.

Former LHCBA secretary Azam Nazir Tarrar told Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) media adviser Muhammad Azhar that they were violating the peaceful norms of protest by forcing lawyers to vacate courtrooms against their will.

Azhar replied that the lawyers, ensuring boycott of the PCO judges, were not singling out anybody and wanted implementing the PBC call for a complete boycott of the PCO judges. He said the whole process was undertaken to ensure that the country had an independent judiciary, which safeguarded the rights of all and sundry.

Tarrar replied that they did not want to give any favour to the judges, who opted to become judges under the PCO.

The lawyers kept on chanting slogans against President General Pervez Musharraf (retired) and the PCO judges on the LHC premises for about two hours and later moved to Kiyani Hall of the LHCBA for a general house meeting.—Reporter