Lawyers’ politics: District bar elections go off without a hitch

Polling results confirm winners in several districts.

SARGODHA/ FAISALABAD:

Results for the district bar elections in several districts have poured in.

In the Sargodha district bar association elections, Chaudhary Shams Naveed was elected president and Khuram Iqbal was elected general secretary. Naveed bagged 655 votes and Iqbal secured 611 votes. Whereas Farhat Ali secured 511 votes and was elected vice president. “It was a scene of jubilation. Hundreds of supporters of the winning candidates were seen dancing in the grounds to the beat of a drum. Sweets and food was distributed among the poor,” said eyewitness Jamshed Noor.

In Faisalabad district bar elections Munawar Husain Sindhu was elected president. Meanwhile, Chaudhery Muhammad Khushhal was made secretary and Afzal Dogar was elected vice president. According to result tabulations Sindhu bagged a total of 885 votes, his opponent Javed Iqbal bagged 760 votes and Khushhal bagged 875 votes. The fourth contestant, Salman Dogar got 1001 votes.

Khuram Zeeshan was elected joint secretary and Rana Asif Irshad was elected finance secretary of the bar.  Muhammad Fayaz was nominated for the position of librarian and Khalid Mehmood was elected auditor. Ten administration committee members were already elected previously. “The first thing on our agenda is to strengthen our campaign for the immediate awarding of a Faisalabad bench of the Lahore High Court (LHC). We have been made promises and now it is time to deliver,” Munawar Husain Sindhu said. Winning candidates in Faisalabad said that they had been promised an LHC bench but the government seemed to be dodging the matter now.

The Friends Group won in the Rahim Yar Khan (RYK) district bar elections. Malik Sajid Feroze was elected president and Syed Babu Shah was elected general secretary. Friends group candidate Feroze bagged 312 votes and his opponent Ch Ramzan Shama secured 241 votes. Shah secured 366 votes and was elected general secretary and his opponent Shahzad Asghar bagged 187 votes.

The successful candidates danced to the beat of a drum and fired in the air upon which police officials outside the bar issued several warnings to the winning candidates and their supporters. In the Liaqatpur tehsil, Friends Group’s Nazakat Ali Khan was elected president and Shah Group’s Azam Unhar was elected the general secretary. In Ahmed Pur Sherqia bar Nazar Aslam group’s Shaukat Mughal was elected president and Syed Abid Husain Bokhari was elected general secretary.

“Overall the bar elections ran smoothly. There were reports of minor skirmishes but nothing major and most people have been pleased with the results in Faisalabad and Sargodha,” said a bar member in Faisalabad, Kamran Wasim.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 16^th, 2012.