LAHORE, June 27: Pakistan Bar Council vice-chairperson Hafiz Abdur Rehman Ansari said here on Monday that confining the PBC electorate to provinces would harm the unity among the legal fraternity. Talking to reporters, Mr Ansari criticized the Senate standing committee for incorporating such an amendment to the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act, 1973, and said the committee submitted its report to the upper house without consulting the PBC or any of the provincial bar councils.

“Such an act seems motivated by personal interest of certain lawyers in the Senate who are bent upon destroying the national character of the apex bar council,” he said in reply to a question.

Another provision of the Senate-adopted law which Mr Ansari opposed was the waiving of the condition that no lawyer would contest for the PBC or any provincial bar council for a third term.

He said the Senate committee had dropped the PBC proposal for “purely personal reasons”. He said many PBC members were intending to contest for the council membership for the third time, who described the proposal as undemocratic. “Nothing is undemocratic if we (intend to) give chance to others in the statutory body. The PBC had proposed this constraint to broaden its representation and infuse new people to run the apex body”.

As for the third point of “dispute”, Mr Ansari said it related to enhancing the period from two to five years for a lawyer to qualify for practice at a high court. When his attention was drawn to a report of the Senate standing committee that this proposal was dropped, he said the Senate had not so far communicated such a decision to the PBC. “If this is the case, we welcome it”, he added.

Mr Ansari said the PBC had worked out a package of amendments, in consultation with all the provincial bar councils, to the act in a different situation. Primarily, he said, the changes in the law were made to remove an anomaly created by the induction of the new local government system which dispensed with administrative divisions and the offices of the commissioner and deputy commissioner. The law provided for the lawyers enrolment on the basis of divisions. The PBC changed it to ‘group of districts’, formed on the basis of defunct divisions to meet the legal requirement.

Besides, the PBC proposed several amendments to the act which also included a permanent restriction on issuing professional licences to people who had a criminal record. Certain changes to the election procedure for the PBC and provincial bar councils were also proposed.

He said the PBC had sent proposals to the law ministry which moved a bill to the Senate.

A standing committee, with Chaudhry Anwar Bhinder as chairperson, was formed and it gave its recommendations. The bill lapsed and the ministry sent to the Senate a new bill on the same line. This time Dr Khalid Rajhna was the standing committee chairperson. This committee yielded to the pressure of certain members who had personal interest and got incorporated some of the proposals which ignored the original PBC scheme, Mr Ansari added.