ISLAMABAD: Over 3,700 lawyers will elect five representatives in the first ever elections of the newly-established Islamabad Bar Council (IBC) on Saturday.

The IBC was established last year after the “Legal Practitioners and Bar Council Act 1973” was amended adding the Islamabad Bar Council to the list of the four provincial and the Pakistan bar councils.

Earlier, the Punjab Bar Council was the regulatory body for the Islamabad-based lawyers. However, after the establishment of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) in 2011, the lawyers had been demanding a separate bar council for the federal capital.

As many as 29 candidates are contesting the elections. IHC Chief Justice Mohammad Anwar Khan Kasi has already nominated six additional district and sessions judges as the polling officers for the elections. They are: ADSJ Kamran Basharat Mufti, Wajid Ali, Shahrukh Arjumand, Ata Rabbani, Sikandar Khan and Mohammad Adnan.

3,700 lawyers will elect five representatives for the bar council

District and Sessions Judge Mohammad Tanvir Mir has been assigned the task of supervising the election process.

The 29 candidates are: Sajjad Afzal Cheema, Shoaib Shaheen, Mian Abdul Razzaq, Abid Nazir Rana, Riasat Ali Gondal, Abrar Raza, Chaudhry Akram, Fayaz Jandran, G. M. Chaudhry, Haroon Rashid, Javed Shorish, Qamar Afzal, Manzoor Malik, Basharatullah, Kalsoom Rafique, Tahir Mehmood, Waqas Malik, Naseer Kayani, Qazi Rafiuddin, Sajjad Haider, Shams Iqbal, Abrar Gillani, Anwar Shah, Dr. Anwar, Syed Wajid Gillani, Idrees Chaudhry, Ismail Baloch and Wusatul Hassan.

Citing the poor monitoring of the candidates, senior lawyer Tariq Asad on Thursday announced to boycott the elections. He said the organisers of the elections failed to observe the rules and procedures envisaged in the Bar Council Act.

He said under rule 10-A, the candidates can be disqualified for hosting breakfast, brunch, luncheons and dinners during the election campaign.

“There are only one per cent candidates who can afford hosting lavish meals for the sake of securing votes,” he said.

It was the responsibility of the incumbent chairman IBC to stop the candidates from hosting lunch and dinners, he said.

Chaudhry Khalid Hussain, the vice-president of the Islamabad Bar Association, told Dawn that IBC chairman Mian Abdul Rauf had contacted the bar a few days ago and sought its help to implement the said rule. “We told him that the proper time to invoke the rule was about a month ago when a candidate hosted dinner at Serena Hotel,” he said.

Since there are several precedence in this regard, the bar association distanced itself from the controversy, he added.

Published in Dawn, May 2nd, 2015

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