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LAHORE, Oct 13: A general meeting of the Supreme Court Bar Association on Thursday deferred the association’s elections till Nov 26. The date of polling, earlier to be held on Oct 22, was extended in view of the massive earthquake in some parts of the country from where a number of lawyers were to take part in the election.
However, the meeting resolved that only the polling date had been changed as all other formalities of the election schedule had already been completed and the final list of candidates had been put on display in Islamabad and in provinces.
The request for the postponement was made by the Peshawar High Court Bar Association which said that a number of lawyers from the province, particularly Mansehra and Abbottabad, would not be able to cast their votes due to the earthquake which hit these areas badly.
The meeting also decided that the general meeting of the 17-member association would be held in Lahore on Nov 19. This meeting was to be held in the city on Oct 13.
CANDIDATES: Two former judges of the Lahore High Court, Malik Saeed Hasan and Malik Muhammad Qayyum, are pitted against one another in a straight contest for the office of the SCBA president.
Advocate Ali Akbar Qureshi has already been elected un-opposed as the bar secretary after his lone rival Syed Zulfiqar Ali Bokhari withdrew his candidature. The office of the secretary is allotted to the Punjab.
As for vice-presidents, one each from the four provinces, advocates Saeed Akhtar from the NWFP and Raja Rab Nawaz from Balochistan have also been declared elected un-opposed.
The contest for other vice-presidents is between Lahore-based advocates Zakaur Rehman and Ghulam Ali Bhatti from the Punjab and Rana Shamim Ahmad Khan and Faqir Muhammad Sheikh from Sindh.
Mahmood Ahmad Sheikh and Chaudhry Muhammad Arshad are in the run for the office of the finance secretary and the contest for additional secretary is between Zulfiqar Ali Bhutta and Malik Qamar Afzal. Both the contests are between the lawyers from Rawalpindi.
Four of eight members of the SCBA executive council have also been elected without contest. They include two from Quetta. Others elected un-opposed are advocates Ruhul Ameen, also an executive member in the outgoing SCBA, and Muhammad Lateef Yusufzai. Mr Yusufzai is the vice-president in the present body and has been associated with the apex body of lawyers in one office or the other.
As such only four executive council members from the Punjab and Sindh are to be elected. About 1,600 senior lawyers, licensed to practice at the Supreme Court, form the electoral college. Approximately 850 of the SCBA voters are from the Punjab, 350 from Sindh, 250 from the NWFP, 125 from the Islamabad-Rawalpindi area and 45 from Balochistan.
