Incumbent president retains post in SHCBA Hyderabad chapter elections

Elections had earlier been thrice postponed due to lawyer groups' complaints

HYDERABAD: The panel led by incumbent president of Sindh High Court Bar Association (SHCBA) Hyderabad chapter Advocate Ayaz Hussain Tunio emerged victorious in the bar elections held on Saturday.

Advocate Tunio, who bagged 432 votes, defeated former Sindh advocate-general Nisar Durrani by 34 votes and Advocate Ghulamullah Chang by 230 votes for the office of president.

More than 1,000 votes were polled in the elections, for which 1,280 members from 14 districts of Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas and Nawabshah divisions were eligible to vote. Advocate Muhammad Waseem Shah was elected as vice-president, Advocate Ishrat Ali Lohar as general secretary, Altaf Sachal Awan as joint secretary, Mumtaz Ahmed Lashari as library secretary and Bhagwandas Bheel as treasurer.



For the seven seats for members of managing committee, 13 lawyers landed in the electoral fray, among whom Israr Hussain Chang, Muhammad Iqbal Hingoro, Shabana Noreen, Rehana Nazeer Gujjar, Kanji Mal Meghwadh, Rao Faisal Ali Rajput and Iqbal Panhwar were elected.

The elections had earlier been thrice postponed in the month of January as the lawyers' groups had challenged the voter lists in the Pakistan Bar Council and Sindh Bar Council.

During the polling, the visits by three provincial ministers Ziaul Hassan Lanjar, Syed Sardar Ali Shah and Jam Khan Shoro irked Democratic Lawyers Forum, which protested the visits and briefly suspended the polling. The forum complained that the provincial ministers tried to exert political influence in the elections. Lanjar and Shoro, being members of the SHCBA, also cast their votes in the elections.