PESHAWAR: A Peshawar High Court bench has sought comments from federal and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governments in a writ petition seeking directive of the court for the government to provide representation to the bar associations of the tribal districts in the provincial bar council.

The bench of Justice Ikramullah Khan and Justice Ijaz Anwar here the other day put on notice attorney general for Pakistan and KP advocate general, asking them to respond to the petition on next date. The bench also issued notices to Pakistan and KP Bar Councils, asking them to put forward their point of view in the case.

The petition has been filed by Advocate Fawad Afzal Safi, a resident of Mohmand tribal district, requesting the court to issue directives to the federal and KP governments to amendment the relevant law so as to provide membership and representation to the bars of Khyber, Mohmand, Bajaur, Waziristan, Kurram and Orakzai tribal districts.

The respondents in the petition are federal secretaries of law and cabinet division, KP chief secretary, provincial law secretary, Pakistan Bar Council through its chairman, KP Bar Council through its chairman and President of Pakistan through his principal secretary.

Petitioner requests court to issue directives for amending law

Senior lawyer Noor Alam Khan appeared for the petitioner and stated that the bars of newly merged district had the same right of representation in the bar council as other sister bars had been given.

He said that the bar councils were autonomous organisations working under a statute for the benefit of lawyers.

He said that after the Constitution (Twenty-Fifth Amendment) Act, 2018, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas including tribal agencies and frontier regions were merged in KP and the law of the land applicable to rest of the country was made applicable to those areas.

He said that as per section 5 of the Legal Practitioners and Bar Council Act, 1973, the district-wise allocation of seats had been provided through a schedule. He added that Khyber, Bajaur and Mohmand bars had same number of seats as that of some other districts, which had been provided representation in KP Bar Council.

Mr Khan claimed that most of the lawyers from the merged districts were enrolled and practicing in the adjacent cities because they had no bar to either enrol, practice or contest elections, therefore it was dire need of the hour to recognise the lawyers of erstwhile tribal areas by enhancing the number of bar council seats so as to give them representation.

He contended that depriving the newly merged district bars of membership in the KP Bar Council was violative of Article 25 of Constitution. He added that to provide representation to bars of the merged district, it was necessary to amend the relevant law.

Published in Dawn, October 16th, 2020