ISLAMABAD: This year too, the Asma Jahangir group maintained its presence in the Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) — the highest supervisory body of lawyers — as one of its senior representatives from Balochistan, Kamran Murtaza, became the vice chairman of the council on Friday.

Mr Murtaza, who secured 13 votes out of a total of 22, also served as president of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) after 2014 elections.

He has replaced Ahsan Bhoon, also a member of the Asma Jahangir group, and will now lead for a year the council, which exercises general control and supervision over the provincial bar councils and regulates entry of lawyers into the legal profession.

“As a strong believer in democracy, my first priority will be to firmly stand by the democratic institutions as well as safeguarding the Constitution and ensuring independence of the judiciary,” Mr Murtaza vowed while talking to Dawn soon after his election.

Not only the PBC would play its role for strengthening the democratic institutions, it would also act as a forerunner to uplift the Quetta bar, which faced a major blow in the Aug 8, 2016 carnage when a majority of lawyers from the city were killed, he said.

As the SCBA head, Mr Murtaza had filed a petition in the Supreme Court on Aug 15, 2014 in the wake of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and Pakistan Awami Tehreek-sponsored Azadi and Inqilab marches outside the Parliament House in an attempt to pre-empt what then perceived by many a recurrence of military takeover.

The petition had reques­ted the court to restrain state authorities from acting in any manner unwarranted by the Constitution and law.

Subsequently, a four-judge bench headed by then chief justice Nasir-ul-Mulk had ordered state functionaries to act in accordance with the Constitution and law and had come out with a loud and clear message of preserving the Constitution at any cost as the judiciary would never permit any deviation from the green book.

On the other hand, Mr Murtaza’s opponent Chaudhry Ishtiaq Ahmad Khan from Lahore, who was fielded by the Hamid Khan group and could obtain only nine votes, accused the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz of interfering in the affairs of the country’s highest bar only to encourage ‘horse trading’.

The Asma Jahangir group has been winning the elections for several years, but the 2016 polls witnessed a major upset when Senator Dr Farogh Naseem of the Hamid Khan group was elected to the top office, thus marking the emergence of the group again after a gap of eight years.

Earlier, the Hamid Khan group continued to enjoy confidence and majority of lawyers in the council from 1995 to 2008, but later its influence waned. Since then Asma Jahangir group has continued to win almost all the elections be it of the PBC, the provincial bars or the SCBA.

On Friday, the 222nd meeting of the PBC was held at its office inside the Supreme Court building in Islamabad under Attorney General Ashtar Ausaf who acted as the returning officer for the elections.

After the election of the vice chairman, the council also elected Ghulam Shabbir Shar from Sukkur as chairman of the PBC executive committee for 2018 in place of Hafeez-ur-Rehman Chau­d­hry, who had resigned from office.

Soon after the elections, the new body constituted a four-member committee un­­d­­er the chairmanship of Bar­­rister Raheel Kamran Shei­kh to ensure independence of the judiciary and the bar.

Apart from Raheel Sheikh from Punjab, members of the committee include Kam­ran Murtaza, Akhtar Hus­sain (Sindh) and Sher Muham­­mad (Khyber Pakhtunkhaw).

Published in Dawn, January 27th, 2018