Lahore Bar: Rival groups race towards finish line

Lahore Bar Association gears up for election day, intense competition between for main positions.

LAHORE: As the Lahore Bar Association (LBA) gears up for election day today, the intense competition between the two rival groups fielding candidates for the main positions has reached its peak. Twenty-eight candidates, backed by either the Friends group or the Hamid Khan group, are contesting 21 seats. Eligible voters stand at 10,700.

Shahzad Hassan Sheikh supported by the Friends group, led by Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) president Asma Jahangir, is fighting for the LBA presidency against Abdul Latif Hinjara who enjoys the support of the Hamid Khan group. These two groups also went head to head in the SCBA elections.

Other than Sheikh and Hinjara, Jamat-i-Islami’s Ziauddin Ansari and MR Awan are also making a bid for the top slot. Insiders said the main contest is most likely between Sheikh and Hinjara.

The Hamid Khan group has already tasted defeat in both the SCBA elections and the Pakistan Bar Council (PBC). Even then, some say, they have a strong chance of victory because of their deep roots in the legal fraternity.

The Friends group is an umbrella for eight groups includnig Jahangir, SBCA vice chairman Kazim Khan, PBC Executive Committee chairman Nasrullah Warraich, Ashraf Wahla, Abid Hassan Minto, former law minister Khalid Ranjha and PBC member Ghulam Murtaza. Most lawyers said that the race could go either way.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 15^th, 2011.