Banking courts: Appoint judges, lawyers demand

LAHORE: The Lahore Bar Association (LBA) has warned that its members will start planning street protests if the federal government does not soon appoint judges to the banking courts. The government has transferred four of the five judges at the courts, leaving just one banking judge, LBA President Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali told a press conference on Saturday. He said if judges were not appointed within 15 days, the lawyers would pour out onto the roads to protest. Ali said that cases worth Rs15 billion were pending at the banking courts. He said that the chief justice of the Lahore High Court had recommended some candidates for appointment to the banking courts, but the federal government had rejected the names without explanation. He said that the LBA believed there should be more than five banking court judges considering the number of cases they have to deal with. “Where will people get justice when there is only one judge?” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 18^th, 2012.