LAHORE, May 24: The proposed establishment of a federal high court in Islamabad and bifurcation of high courts in constitutional, commercial, civil and criminal divisions are part of the agenda, among other issues, of an all-Pakistan lawyers convention which the Pakistan Bar Council plans to hold in Lahore on June 10.

The convention’s agenda was released across the country by PBC vice-chairperson Ali Ahmad Kurd to its members, office-bearers of the Supreme Court Bar Association and presidents and secretaries of high courts bar associations and district bar associations.

The agenda also accompanied a PBC resolution, adopted at its meeting at Quetta on May 5, which said that lawyers’ representatives had rejected the government attempt to create divisions in high courts and the establishment of a federal high court in Islamabad, said a press release issued here on Wednesday.

Reminding the bar office-bearers of resolution’s contents, Mr Kurd said the proposed federal high court and bifurcating of high courts in four divisions in the name of restructuring the superior judiciary was a government plot to further weakening the country’s judicial structure with the design to make the judiciary ineffective and subordinate to the executive.

The PBC vice-chairperson said the government plan was in clear contravention to the 1973 Constitution and the referring of the bill on the subject to the National Assembly’s standing committee also suffered from violation of the Constitution.

Other items on the agenda, including military operation in Balochistan and the northern areas, which according to the PBC vice-chairperson, was fanning secessionist tendencies.

Allowing provinces with greater autonomy and dispensing with the Constitution’s concurrent list to give the federating units administrative control over their resources to make Pakistan a true federation, is also part of the agenda.