LAHORE, Aug 19: Lawyers marched on city streets on Thursday protesting against the government move to amend the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act-1973 and confer powers on superior court judges to take disciplinary action against lawyers on charges of professional misconduct.

The rally followed a convention of representative lawyers assembling here from across the province on the invitation of Punjab Bar Council. The convention, through a resolution, rejected the move and announced a march on the National Assembly on Sept 4 if the government-sponsored amendment was not withdrawn.

Carrying banners and placards, lawyers paraded on the Fane Road and The Mall yelling slogans against the move which, they felt, undermined their professional independence. The rally was headed by Punjab Bar Council vice-chairperson Chaudhry Tanvirur Rehman Randhawa and executive committee chairperson Pir Mohammad Masood Chishti.

A majority of the participants in the rally, the first of its kind in recent years, comprised office-bearers of district and tehsil bar associations who had been invited by the Punjab Bar Council to give the event a representative colour. Members of the Punjab Bar Council and some other lawyers also joined them.

A heavy contingent of anti-riot police accompanied the agitating lawyers who marched from the PBC office at Fane Road to the Masjid-i-Shuhada on The Mall and back in the form of a procession.