ISLAMABAD: The lawyers of Islamabad on Saturday elected five members for the newly-established Islamabad Bar Council (IBC) for a five-year term.

The five members will soon elect a vice-chairman for the IBC. The newly-elected members are: Qazi Rafiuddin Babar, Shoaib Shaheen, Haroon Rashid, Syed Wajid Ali Gillani and Faiz Jandran.

After the establishment of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) in 2011, the lawyers had been demanding the establishment of a bar council for the Islamabad capital territory to handle matters related to the discipline and the issuance of practice licences to the local lawyers.

Earlier, the Islamabad-based lawyers were dealt by the Punjab Bar Council with regard to such matters.

On Saturday, the narrow corridors of the district courts were packed with the supporters, friends and associates of the 29 senior lawyers who were contesting the elections for the five seats.

They distributed publicity cards of the candidates among every passerby with a request to vote for them.

A lawyer canvassing for a candidate said most of the candidates spent a huge amount on the campaign. In addition to spending thousands of rupees on the publicity material, they also spent millions of rupees to entertain their ‘potential voters’.

“In my over a decade old practice, I have never witnessed such a huge spending on the elections of such a professional forum,” he said, adding: “I also attended a number of breakfasts, brunches, luncheons and dinners hosted by the candidates.”

Those who could not arrange good meals invited the lawyers to ‘hi-tea’ in the cafeteria of the district courts, he said.

The lawyers also assigned different duties to their associates and during the campaign the junior lawyers looked busier in the publicity campaign of their senior lawyers than dealing with the professional matters.

The polling started at 8am and continued till 5pm. As many as six polling stations had been set up for the 3,700 registered voters.

Additional district and sessions judges Kamran Basharat Mufti, Wajid Ali, Shahrukh Arjumand, Ata Rabbani, Sikandar Khan and Mohammad Adnan were the polling officers. The district and sessions judge, Tanvir Mir, was the returning officer for the elections.

Published in Dawn, May 3rd, 2015

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