LAHORE, June 19: The amended Legal Practitioners and Bar Council Act has increased the number of Pakistan Bar Council members to 22 and set a ceiling for seats in provincial bar councils, besides deciding the eligibility of lawyers to practice at the Supreme Court and high courts.
The amendment to the act was unanimously adopted by the Senate on June 17, and will be made applicable from the election to the Pakistan Bar Council scheduled to be held in August-September this year.
Senator Sardar Mohammad Lateef Khan Khosa told Dawn that the law would now be sent to the National Assembly for an enactment. But if it was not moved to the national legislature in time, it will be promulgated in the form of an ordinance on the basis of the Senate amendment so that the PBC elections were held in time.
This is the first time that the law, enacted in 1973, has been amended in 32 years.
According to Mr Khosa, who is also a member of the council, the number of seats in the apex council would now rise from 20 to 22 as two seats had been added to the quota of the NWFP Bar Council having 28 members. Its share in the council would be four now.
The amended act has fixed the number of seats for the Punjab Bar Council at 75 and its representation in the Pakistan bar remains unchanged at 11. The number of the Sindh Bar Council seats has been raised from 32 to 33 with the addition of a seat to Larkana from where two members would be elected to the council. Its representation in the Pakistan bar will continue to be six.
The major beneficiary of the amendment will be the Balochistan Bar Council whose number will now rise to seven. Four seats have been allotted to Quetta as happened in the past and three added to give representation for the first time to lawyers from interior parts of the province where bar membership has swelled with the passage of time. The provincial share in the Pakistan Bar Council will, however, remain one.
Mr Khosa said through an amendment to the section 11 of the act, the voting by the members of one province for candidates from the others had been banned.
He said this was a good change in the law, which would end disproportionate representation to candidates from another province, who did not enjoy support in their own province and yet got elected with the help of votes from another province. He said the proposal that a lawyer could not contest for the Pakistan or a provincial bar council was dropped, as this condition was considered to be undemocratic. But the condition that a lawyer having less than a five-year practice shall be eligible to contest for the provincial bar council election, was adopted.
The law also adopted a provision that any one involved in moral offences and was convicted by a court of competent jurisdiction, could not qualify to practice at bar. From now on, applicants will qualify to obtain license to practice only after submitting an evidence before the provincial bar council that he or she had no criminal record.
The bill was moved to the Senate on the basis of a package of amendments approved by the Pakistan Bar Council last year in consultation with all provincial councils. The new law, Senator Khosa said, was considered to be in consonance with the aspirations of the lawyers.
The earlier bill, which was moved last year, lapsed and the ministry of law prepared another bill which was moved to the Senate about two months ago.
He said eminent lawyers in the Senate belonging to both sides, including himself, S.M. Zafar, Dr Khalid Ranjha, Chaudhry Muhammad Anwar Bhinder and Waseem Sajjad, joined hands to ensure a consensus on the law and it was, thus, approved unanimously after a hectic out-of-the-house lobbying.
Senator Khosa said the new law ensured that the provincial bar councils had a fairly good membership and they became financially and administratively manageable. Before freezing the membership, the provincial council membership was based on the number of lawyers enrolled every year.
For example, the Punjab had 101 members and this number was going to be about 150 if the law was not amended. In that case, the council was bound to be unmanageable. Similarly, the provincial share in the Pakistan Bar Council was also taken care of in a manner as to enable them to get one member elected in the PBC after every six to seven members.
Replying to a question, he said the provincial councils would elect their members under the new law in future. He did not agree to a suggestion that provincial bar council elections, held towards the end of 2004, had run into an anomaly as Sindh and the NWFP held polling under the original law and the Punjab and Balochistan councils under an ordinance based on the proposed amendments.