GILGIT: The lawyers continued with their Thursday-only protest across Gilgit-Baltistan by boycotting courts and staging a sit-in outside the GB chief court building in Gilgit.

The call for protest was jointly given by the GB Bar Council, GB Supreme Appellate Court, chief court, and district bar associations of the region to claim provisional judicial rights for the region’s lawyers.

The GB lawyers have been protesting every Thursday since the first week of last month.

Outside the GB chief court’s building here, GB Bar Association president Javed Ahmad said lawyers across the region had been protesting from many years demanding provision judicial rights to GB lawyers like other parts of the country.

He said the lawyers demanded the rights enjoyed by the legal practitioners working in other parts of the country.

“We have decided to continue with the protest until the implementation of our demands. The weekly boycott of courts will continue across the region, while protest rallies and sit-ins will be organised every Thursday until the acceptance of our demands,” he said.

The bar association’s president said a local eligible lawyer should be appointed to the vacant post of the GB Supreme Appellate Court’s judge, which had been lying vacant for two years.

He said under Article 69 of the GB Empowerment and Self Governance Order, 2009, 60 per cent of the lawyers should be appointed to the GB chief court’s posts.

Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2018