PBC urged to push for female members

Official also calls direct elections of council through votes of enrolled advocates

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Bar Council (PBC), the apex regulatory body of lawyers, has been asked to demand new legislation to ensure two reserved seats for female lawyers as council members.

PBC executive member Raheel Kamran Sheikh has written a letter to other 22 council members urging them to demand that parliament should make amendments to the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act (LPBCA), 1973 for direct elections of the council through votes of enrolled advocates and for reserving at least two seats for the female members.

Neither has any woman become a Supreme Court judge so far nor a PBC member.

“it is a matter of shame that ever since its establishment, there has not been a single female member elected to serve as a member of this the council including the late Asma Jahangir who was envied as a role model not only by a clear majority of the females in this profession but also a fair number of male members of the legal fraternity,” the letter read.

“This is primarily attributable to the indirect electoral system prescribed in the LPBCA, 1973 whereby members of the council are elected through the votes of elected members of the provincial and Islamabad Bar Councils, who have unfortunately never trusted any female practitioner worthy of representing them in this apex regulatory body,” it added.

“The results are obvious: regulatory activities and policy statements of the PBC seldom reflect legitimate concerns and needs of the female gender in the society as well as in the legal profession, let alone prescribing any solution.”

Sheikh also stated that since his election, he has been persistently voicing for the direct election of the PBC through the votes of the advocates enrolled by the council as well as reserving at least two seats for female lawyers, one each of the larger provinces -- Punjab and Sindh.
“This will ensure diverse professional representation and better political accountability of the elected leadership in the PBC.”

Sheikh mentioned that he had tried to raise both the issues with the last and the present federal governments, including former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and the incumbent Law Minister Dr Farogh Naseem as well as the top leadership of the council, but to no avail “for the reason that perhaps status quo suits them better”.