KARACHI:
Ghost teachers collect their salaries but never turn up for school. Much like them are ‘ghost advocates’, according to some of Sukkur’s lawyers. These ghost advocates are just “butchers and shopkeepers” who have been made members of the bar and will surface to vote in its election for office bearers today.
Needless to say, this has caused a dispute, with one side wanting a court to issue a stay order for the elections. A petition was filed by Syed Bachal Shah, who is the president of the Sukkur bar. He pointed out a number of irregularities in the way new memberships were granted and submitted a list of 107 new members who, according to him, were not entitled to the privilege.
They are “ghost advocates” who decide the fate of our (bar) elections, exclaimed Shabbir Shar, a senior lawyer and the petitioner’s counsel in court on Friday. Butchers and shopkeepers have been made members and will be voting in the farcical exercise, he said, only to be promptly admonished by the bench. Justices Muhammad Athar Saeed and Aqeel Ahmed Abbasi asked him not to use such language. Both sides were cautioned to argue their cases in a normal tone.
Earlier, the bench had heard the respective sides for over 90 minutes with two brief intervals given to the Sindh Bar Council secretary and lawyer Abdul Haleem Siddiqui to confirm the list of voters and other allied issues.
The petitioner’s lawyer, Shafqat Shah Masoomi, showed the court two membership certificates to argue the case. One of the members retired as a superintendent of police in 2008.
The same year, he was granted bar membership and the right to vote even though he did not qualify. A lawyer has to have practised a minimum of two years at the high court level to be eligible.
Where ever there are presidents or elected officer bearers belonging to a particular group in the Sindh Bar Council, they are allowed to continue as members for years at length, said a counsel for the petitioner, objecting to the right to vote for 107 new members. He also brought up the dual membership for some old members among other issues.
The petitioner wants the elections to be put off for a fortnight so that a new list of voters is prepared.
The division bench, instead, came up with a solution. It ordered two different polling booths to be set up, one each for old members and another for the disputed 107 new members.
The counting will be separate and the effect of new members on the elections would be examined later, the proposal by the bench said. The petition will remain pending. As both sides agreed to the proposal, the bench adjourned till July 14. The elections are scheduled to be held on July 2.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 2nd, 2011.
COMMENTS
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ