LAHORE: A three-member bench of the Supreme Court on Sunday formed a special committee and four provincial committees for inspection of law colleges across the country, seeking their recommendations for improving law education’s quality.

The bench directed the provincial committees to complete their work within five weeks and submit reports to the special committee for further deliberations, which would conclude its task in a week.

The bench further directed chief secretaries and advocate generals of provinces for providing logistic support to the provincial committee concerned.

The bench headed by Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar passed these orders while hearing a petition filed by the Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) against mushroom growth of law colleges in the country.

As the proceedings began, senior lawyer Hamid Khan, along with PBC’s Vice Chairman Ahsan Bhoon and Azam Nazir Tarar appeared before the bench and recommended names for heads of provincial committees, in response to bench’s Jan 20 orders.

They requested the bench to approve the names of former Justice Khilji Arif Hussain, Prof Ahmad Ali and former Justice Aman Ullah Khan to head the committees for Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, respectively.

They pointed out that the committee headed by Advocate Anwar Kamal was already functioning in Punjab as per directions of the Lahore High Court.

They submitted that a meeting of all provincial heads of the committees had been summoned in Islamabad on Tuesday, wherein they would be briefed about the task.

They recommended inclusion of the members of the PBC, provincial bar councils, the Higher Education Commission and others in each provincial committee.

At this, the bench appreciated the private sector for helping to fill the gap created by the public sector in the law education. However, it observed that the private sector should do this in a manner that produced lawyers instead of munshis (clerks).

The bench accepted all recommendations made for the formation of the committees and observed that the task should be completed within six weeks.

The bench further observed that all the pending cases at the Lahore High Court regarding the matter would also be heard along with the present case. The bench would take up the matter on March 6, at principal seat, Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, January 22nd, 2018