ISLAMABAD: There should be direct elections of the Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) through votes of its elected members and two seats should be reserved for women lawyers in the council, according to a letter to the PBC written by a senior member on Saturday.

“I make this appeal to all members of the Pakistan Bar Council to resolve to demand from the parliament suitable amendments in the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act [LPBCA] 1973 for direct elections of the council through votes of advocates enrolled by it,” said Raheel Kamran Sheikh in the letter dispatched to PBC vice chairman Syed Amjad Shah and other members of the 22-man council.

Currently, members of PBC are elected through votes of the elected members of the provincial and Islamabad Bar Councils.

“It is a matter of shame that ever since its [PBC] establishment, there has not been a single female member elected to serve as the member of this apex bar council including late Asma Jahangir who is envied as a role model not only by a majority of the females in this profession but also a fair number of male members of the legal fraternity.”

The women members should be one from each of the larger provinces i.e. Punjab and Sindh, he added.

Explaining the reasons behind the dearth of women’s participation in the PBC, he said primarily it was attributable to the indirect electoral system prescribed in the LPBCA Act and it was these members who have “unfortunately never trusted any female practitioner worthy of representing them in this apex regulatory body”, he said.

The results are obvious: regulatory activities, policy statements of the PBC seldom reflected legitimate concerns and needs of women lawyers, he wrote.

He said the measures would ensure diverse professional representation and better political accountability of the elected leadership in PBC.

Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2019