LHCBA polls: PBC again orders staging manual elections

Presidential candidate again challenges order in Lahore High Court

LAHORE: The Pakistan Bar Council has once again ordered staging the Lahore High Court Bar Association elections through manual balloting after the high court referred the case back to the lawyers association for fresh adjudication.

A week ago, the PBC vice-chairman had ordered against using biometric voting system in the LHCBA polls scheduled for February 25. The Lahore High Court, however, suspended the order and referred the case back to the PBC for deciding afresh the petition by presidential candidate Sardar Khurram Khosa.

On Saturday, PBC Vice-Chairman Ahsan Bhoon in his order said no copy of the LHC order was produced by any of the parties before him and no one appeared on behalf of Khosa.

Bhoon said it was clear the provincial bar council had the authority to recognise the high court bar associations or not as well as district and sub divisional bar association. The PBC is the appellate authority in respect of decisions of all provincial bar council and similar positions.

Hence, any claim that the rules of PBC or provincial bar councils are not applicable is misconceived, Bhoon stated in his order. The rules framed by the provincial bar councils and PBC and their orders were applicable to all bar association including the Supreme Court Bar Association and the high court bar associations. “There should be no confusion about this,” he stated.

The PBC vice-chairman said the experience of introducing biometric voting system in last year’s election for LHCBA as well as the recently held Lahore Bar Association election did not prove to be efficient or transparent.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 19^th, 2017.