Vacant seats: High court adjourns hearing on petition

New bench with the new CJ to hear case.

KARACHI: The hearing of a constitutional petition filed by lawyers against the Sindh Bar Council (SBC) and its Executive Council member Salahuddin Gandapur was adjourned till February 17 as the present bench sat for the last day due to Sindh High Court Chief Justice Sarmad Jalal Osmany’s elevation to the Supreme Court.

On Friday, when the petition filed by Tariq Mehmood A Khan, Azizullah Khan, Muhammad Ali and Azmatullah was taken up, the counsel for both petitioners and respondents were present. The bench, however, adjourned the hearing and ordered a fresh hearing by a new bench as it will not be treated as part heard.

The petitioners maintain that the seat of an SBC member fell vacant after the death of Muhammad Ali Abbasi, a senior lawyer and former Karachi Bar Association president, before the final results of the bar elections. They maintained that as the election process was not terminated, the SBC was bound to announce the election for the vacant seat.

They maintained that despite a representation by the then SBC vice chairman, Mahmoodul Hassan, the Sindh advocate-general - who is also the SBC chairman - issued a notification making Salahuddin Gandapur a member on that seat. The petitioners submitted that the notification was in violation of the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act, 1973, Rules 1976 and Rules 2002.

They prayed the court to direct the SBC to hold fresh elections for the seat, asking Gandapur to prove under what legal authority he was holding the seat, declare the notification by the SBC chairman illegal and to restrain the respondent member from any act in the SBC till the disposal of the petition.

The petition is likely to be heard by a new bench under the new Sindh High Court chief justice.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 5^th, 2011.