PESHAWAR: A Peshawar High Court Bench on Thursday directed the Pakistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa bar councils to respond to a petition seeking enrolment of the University of Peshawar’s law degree programme students as trainee lawyers on the basis of course completion and not that of the announcement of exam results.

Justice Qaiser Rasheed Khan and Justice Mohammad Naeem Anwar issued notices to the councils after hearing preliminary arguments on the petition of 33 law students, who requested the court to declare that they are entitled to be enrolled as trainee lawyers or apprentices from the date of their course completion and that the relevant amended rules, which prohibit their enrollment on the basis of course completion, are arbitrary and discriminatory.

The bench ordered the Pakistan and KP bar councils and Higher Education Commission to respond to the petition on next hearing to be fixed later.

Saifullah Muhib Kakakhel, lawyer for the petitioners, requested the court to declare the rules, especially Rule 108-C of the Pakistan Legal Practitioners and Bar Council Rules, 1976, illegal and that the same was not applicable to the petitioners retrospectively.

He said his clients had taken admission in 2016 on court orders in three years LLB programme, which was discontinued by the Pakistan Bar Council.

The lawyer said the petitioners’ LLB degree programme was of three years, while their contemporary students of other provinces had taken the LLB final year exam and got results in Sept 2019. He added that the petitioners, who had sat the exam in Jan, didn’t get results, which were to be declared in Sept 2020 or later.

The lawyer since the LLB exam results used to take a long time, the bar councils required law students to take course completion certificate from their respective colleges or universities on the last exam of LLB Final Year and register themselves with them for apprenticeship with senior lawyers.

He said the negligence of the university had led to the petitioners’ inability to compete with contemporaries from other provinces or universities with regard to scholarships, practice licences, competitive exams, judiciary, and further education.

Published in Dawn, May 1st, 2020