PESHAWAR: Peshawar High Court has suspended a notification of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Bar Council (KPBC) for clearance of dues up to Dec 31, 2025, to stand eligible for bar association polls.

A bench consisting of Justice Ijaz Anwar and Justice Inamullah Khan issued the order after preliminary hearing into two identical petitions filed by several lawyers against the impugned notification of Dec 23, 2025, and a council decision issued on March 7, 2026, about it.

It fixed March 18 for next hearing of the petitions filed by Zoya Javed, Kamran Khan and several other advocates to seek declaration that the impugned notification of Dec 23 and March 7 were illegal.

The petitioners requested the court to declare that the advocates who cleared their dues within an extended deadline remained eligible to vote and contest elections of the Peshawar Bar Association scheduled for March 28.

Advocates Shumail Ahmad Butt, Arshad Ali Nowsherwi and Yasir Khattak appeared for the petitioners and said that through the impugned notification of Dec 23, several hundred voters were disenfranchised.

They said that while making amendments to the KP Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Rules, 2010, lawyers were not put on notice to clear their dues.

The lawyers said that without any formal order of the executive committee of the bar council, the matter was placed before the Pakistan Bar Council (PBC), which was remanded back to the KPBC for decision afresh.

They argued that instead of placing the matter before the KPBC, the executive committee passed the impugned order of March 7.

The lawyers said that through the impugned notification of Dec 23, amendment was introduced in Rule 94 of the 2010 Rules requiring clearance of bar council dues up to Dec 31, 2025 for electoral eligibility.

They said that the notification was issued merely a few days prior to the expiry of the deadline during the winter vacation period, which caused grave hardship to the advocates across the province.

The lawyers said in view of those hardships, the bar council officially extended the deadline for clearance of dues up to Jan 31, 2026, through a press release.

They added that the petitioners and scores of other lawyers had cleared their outstanding dues within the extended time frame granted by the competent authority.

The counsel said that subsequently one of the respondents, Farman Ali, challenged that notification and the extension before the PBC, which remanded the matter back to the KPBC for deciding the matter within three days.

They claimed that the executive committee members expressed divergent views and no final decision was reached regarding disenfranchisement of advocates who paid dues within the extended time period.

The lawyers said that despite absence of any lawful determination the impugned actions now threaten to deprive the petitioners and thousands of advocates across the province from exercising their electoral rights.

Published in Dawn, March 14th, 2026