LAHORE, Oct 31: Confrontation within the Lahore High Court Bar Association seemed to be mounting as lawyers were divided in two groups on Friday with one claiming that its president, Hafiz Abdur Rehman Ansari, had been removed from the office in a ‘unanimously’ adopted no-confidence move of the bar’s general house and the other saying that no such event had taken place and that Mr Ansari continued to be the bar president.

The general house meeting had originally been convened to condemn the arrest of PML-N leader Makhdoom Javed Hashmi and the murder of a lawyer. But when the meeting was at its fag end, Abdul Wahid Chaudhry moved a resolution against Mr Ansari on an initiative of Aftab Bajwa, seeking a no-trust vote against the LHCBA president. The resolution was moved when Mr Ansari had announced session’s adjournment and left the place.

The movers of no-trust resolution said that lawyers had reassembled for a meeting “presided over by vice-president MM Alam Chaudhry” to adopt the motion unanimously. The meeting also asked Mr Chaudhry to take over as the acting-president till the bar elections in February next year.

However, Mr Chaudhry said: “I have not presided over any such meeting (which adopted the resolution against Mr Ansari).”

Mr Ansari said he was still the LHCBA president as a meeting for a no-confidence motion had to be requisitioned within a stipulated period of the receipt of notice. Such a meeting exclusively dealt with the no-confidence motion and no other business, he added.

But the Punjab Bar Council, which was insisting that Mr Ansari had been removed from his office, restrained him from posing as the LHCBA president. Independent sources told Dawn on Friday that Mr Ansari might not be allowed to use his office on Saturday, and if he did so, the matter would be taken up with the Lahore High Court in a petition against him. At the end of the session during which Mr Ansari was “voted out of his office”, the lawyers were divided in two clear groups, which created noisy scenes as some of them even took up fist-fights with each other near the site of a protest camp against the demolition of Fane Road chambers.

Some lawyers uprooted the camp when Senator Dr Khalid Ranjha was present there. It was generally believed that some junior lawyers “on government’s payroll” were key actors in the situation. They were so emboldened by the presence of Dr Ranjha that one of them first set on fire a banner at the camp and then joined others to demolish it. The tent fell on the protesting lawyers, and some of them received bruises.

The incident sparked emotions and some lawyers started shouting slogans against Dr Ranjha who was later escorted by the government law officers out of trouble. Even after Mr Ranjha’s exit from the scene, lawyers kept on exchanging hot words with each other, hurling abuses and even fist-fighting.

In another move against LHCBA president Hafiz Abdur Rehman Ansari on Thursday, a representation against him was placed before the Punjab Bar Council’s anti-corruption committee on charges of misconduct and misuse of office. The representation was made by Advocate Saiful Mulook with the vice-chairperson of the Punjab Bar Council, accusing Mr Ansari of working for and advancing the agenda of a religio-political party he belonged to and causing a confrontation between the bench and the Bar.

The Punjab Bar Council members, including vice-chairperson Arif Chaudhry, unanimously adopted on Friday a resolution that charged Hafiz Ansari with conspiring against lawyers’ struggle for undiluted democracy. The resolution said Mr Ansari was being removed from the office as he was solely responsible for the Bar-bench confrontation. It also said that the issue of lawyers chambers had already been taken up with the LHC chief justice who responded to it positively.

As for the legality of Bar session that adopted the resolution for ouster of Mr Ansari, the PBC resolution said it was within the Bar’s constitution and could not have been presided over by Mr Ansari who was facing a no-trust motion. The PBC resolution said that Mr Ansari had pursued the agenda of sabotaging the lawyers’ movement against the Legal Framework Order (LFO) because of his allegiance to a political organization which had served as the B-Team of a martial law government. According to the resolution, Mr Ansari’s party was still negotiating a compromise with the government, and it was under a direction from the party that he was targeting the superior judiciary for ulterior motives.

Mr Ansari said that he could not be removed from the office of LHCBA president the way the other party was claiming. Citing the Bar constitution, he said an exclusive session of the bar was required upon the receipt of a notice of a no-confidence motion against a Bar office-bearer. The notice is to be served in advance and a meeting fixed within the stipulated period. According to him, the session had been adjourned and what happened later on, had no legal bearing.

Meanwhile, efforts have been stepped up to settle the issue of lawyers affected by the demolition of chambers at Fane Road. Former federal minister Senator Khalid Ranjha and Punjab Bar Council vice-chairperson Mohammad Arif Chaudhry called on the Lahore High Court chief justice, and the two leaders later gave an assurance to the affected lawyers that their problem would be solved on priority basis. Mr Chaudhry said that all the original and bonafide owners of land would be given an alternative place for chambers. However, the lawyers who had joined one chamber or the other, might not be accommodated.

The LHCBA has been insisting on a solution on the basis of a decision reached by a committee comprising Karamat Nazir Bhandari and Khalil Ramday — who are now judges of the Supreme Court — that three kanals out of 16 be earmarked for lawyers’ chambers.