LAHORE, Oct 29: The number of lawyers enrolled as voters to the Supreme Court Bar Association has surprisingly risen by more than 100 in Lahore alone. The polling will be held on Monday and senior lawyers will go to cast their vote at seven polling stations established across the country.

As for the electoral rolls for Lahore, it now shows the number of voters as high as 767 whereas the voters’ list for 2004 had 675 senior lawyers licensed to practice in the Supreme Court. Nowhere in the country has the number of voters risen so sharply as in the cities falling in the jurisdiction of the benches of the Lahore High Court in Lahore, Multan, Bahawalpur and Rawalpindi-Islamabad.

In all, the number of voters across the country has gone up to 1,519. There are 267 voters in Sindh, including Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkur, 132 in Peshawar, 50 in Quetta, 176 in Rawalpindi-Islamabad, 82 in Multan and 45 in Bahawalpur.

Some 25 of the Supreme Court lawyers, who no longer practice law, have also been enrolled as the members of the SCBA after many years. Similarly, as many as 400 of the Punjab lawyers have suddenly become life members upon a payment of Rs5,000 each. This number is also the biggest so far. About 200 lawyers were enrolled as life members last year.

Different groups allege that certain candidates have paid the money, but none of the aspirants accepts the charge. But the payment of the subscription a few weeks ahead of the election remains a question which no one is ready to answer.