Lawyers elect district level leaders

Polling time extended by 30 mins at Lahore Bar, tie at Pasur Bar.

LAHORE: Elections to more than 30 district bar associations were held across the Punjab on Saturday, the last day for bar elections, which started on January 1.

In Lahore, former Supreme Court Bar Association president Hamid Khan monitored the elections on behalf of the presidential candidate, Abdul Latif Hunjra. Asma Jahangir, the incumbent SCBA president, supported the campaign for Shehzad Hasan Sheikh.

An extra hour of polling was allowed on the request of the voters. The candidates were all in favour of the extension because of the 30-minute suspension in the afternoon after a slogan-chanting match between rival groups turned unpleasant.

Lawyers voted to elect representatives against 11 slots. The polling started at 9 am, at a quite slow pace. By the lunch break only 800 lawyers had voted.

The incident occurred after the lunch break when polling re-started. At 2 pm, a large number of lawyers entered the polling booths and started shouting slogans against their rival group. As the sloganeering intensified, the election commission stopped the polling and instructed all candidates to remove their supporters from the polling booths. The candidates were also told to pacify their agitated supporters if they wanted voting to be resumed. This was achieved in 30 minutes.

Some of the lawyers also expressed their dissatisfaction with the arrangements, saying that there were fewer polling booths than were needed. Some even said that they had not been able to vote because of the poor arrangements.

In Pasrur, both the candidates for president received 100 votes each. Chaudhry Liaqat Ali Sial and Chaudhry Altaf Suhail refused the re-polling option or deciding the outcome with the toss of a coin. Instead, they will share the term. Suhail and Sial will now act as president of the Pasrur bar for six months each. Mian Abid Hussain was elected the general secretary.

In Daska, the Justice and Peace Group won all the seats. Muhammad Asif Bajwa got 226 votes and was elected the president;  Saeed Sarwar Baryar was elected general secretary and Faizur Rehman Siddiqi the vice president.

Bashir Warraich was elected as the Ferozewala Bar Association president while Khaleeq Bhatti was elected as the general secretary. Mian Shahid Mahmood was elected the vice president , Kamran Butt the joint secretary, Shahbaz Awan the finance secretary, and Ali Akbar Qureshi the library secretary.

In Mandi Bahauddin, Wasim Hussain was elected president and Muhammad Azhar Ranjha as the secretary.  Haji Javed was elected president of the Gujrat Bar Association while Chaudhry Shafqatullah was elected the secretary. Muhammad Rafiq Sial was elected as president of the Narowal Bar Association and Amir Nawaz Ghumman as the secretary.

In the Multan Bar Association election, Arbab Ahmed Sayyed was elected as president and Chaudhry Jahanzeb Ahmed the secretary. In Rawalpindi Bar elections, Malik Jawad Khalid was elected as president, Sardar Mazhar as secretary and Malik Ishtiaq as vice-president.

Abdul Rehman Bukhari was elected the Ahmed Pur East Bar Association president, Javed Akhtar as VP and Khawaja Zubair Ashiq as the secretary.

Hassnain Nawaz was elected as president and Mazhar Hussain Joiya as the secretary of the Bhakkar Bar Association. In the Khushab Bar Association elections, Malik Azam was elected as president and Shafqat Hayat Khan as the secretary. In Joharabad, Azam Awan was elected as president, Muhammad Siddique as VP and Shafqat Hayat as secretary. Mahmood Ahmed was elected as the Sargodha Bar Association president while Samina Kausar was elected its joint secretary. The result for the secretary was withheld.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 16^th,  2011.