High Court Bar: Asghar Ali Gill elected president

Asghar Ali Gill of the Professional Group of Lawyers was elected president of the LHCBA.

LAHORE: Asghar Ali Gill of the Professional Group of Lawyers was elected president of the Lahore High Court Bar Association (LHCBA) on Saturday.

He defeated Rai Basheer, a member of the Punjab Bar Council and the Judicial Commission of Pakistan, by a margin of 1,562 votes. Gill secured 4,172 votes to Basheer’s 2610 votes. In a close contest, Arshad Malik Awan was elected the LHCBA secretary. He defeated Sardar Akbar Dogar with a margin of 12 votes. Awan got 2,704 votes while Dogar secured 2,692 votes. Mian Jahangir defeated Malik Ijaz Gorcha to the vice president’s seat by a difference of 2079 votes. He obtained 3,885 votes and his rival got 1,806 votes. Mian Azam got elected as the finance secretary securing 5,447 votes. His opponent, Munawar Gondal, got only 1,100 votes.

President-elect Gill was supported by former Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) presidents Munir A Malik and Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan. Besides SCBA president Asma Jahangir, Rai had the support of PBC members Muhammad Ahsan Bhoon and Ramazan Chaudhry, the Peoples Lawyers Forum and a faction of the Pakistan Muslim League (N) Lawyers Forum.

The election marked the first victory for the Professional Group led by former SCBA president Hamid Khan this year. Earlier, it had lost elections for the SCBA, the Pakistan Bar Council, the Punjab Bar Council and the Lahore Bar Association.

According to the elections committee, the voters’ turnout remained around 50 per cent. 6,739 of the 13,508 registered voters cast their votes.

Tight security arrangements were in place to avoid any untoward incident.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 27^th, 2011.