LAHORE: President Ayub Khan assured members of the bar that his Government was dedicated to the rule of law. In his message on the inauguration of the Pakistan Bar Council here today [April 9], President Ayub said that the rule of law should be such as to ensure and facilitate justice and not hamper it.

The President said the Bar Council had various responsibilities to discharge and a very important role to play in the development of law in this country. The President had no doubt that the Council would discharge its responsibilities with propriety and vigour.

The Chief Justice of Pakistan, Mr Justice A.R. Cornelius, in his message said that the inauguration of the Pakistan Bar Council marked the commencement of a new era in the development of law in Pakistan. By achievement of internal autonomy, he said, the legal profession would find horizons opening for the initiatives and efforts of the members.

The first task of the Council, he said, should be to check the trend of making litigation a vested interest of the community of lawyers. “The major interest is the public interest namely, that all differences arising within the complex of the nation’s manifold activities should be speedily and harmoniously resolved through the agencies of law and justice.”

[Meanwhile, as also reported by our Staff Correspondent from Lahore,] the Central Law Minister, Mr S.M. Zafar, said here today that it was the duty of every educated Pakistani, specially those endowed with legal education, to try to remove anachronisms in our present legal system adjusting it to the conditions and problems of today.

The Minister, who was inaugurating the Pakistan Bar Council in the Provincial Assembly building, said that the present legal system in Pakistan was not in harmony with the times. He said the “existing judicial resources and old ways of doing things are no longer adequate”.

Published in Dawn, April 10th, 2016