ISLAMABAD: Human rights activist Asma Jahangir’s Democratic Group of Lawyers recently secured majority number of seats in the Pakistan Bar Council.
The country’s top body for lawyers consists of 23 elected lawyers from different provinces. The tenure of each member is for five years with vice-chairman’s tenure only limited to one year.
Before Jahandir’s Democratic group, Hamid Khan’s group, known as the Professional Group, had majority with one member in the PBC. However things turned around when the head of the PBC executive committee Abdul Fayaz, who was associated with Hamid Khan’s group switched sides. The change of loyalty has enabled the Democratic group to gain majority in the body. This has led Asma’s group to capture the chairmanship of 21 PBC standing committees.
Earlier, Hamid Khan’s group had dominated bar politics from 1995 to 2008.
Ahsan Bhoon, who is an active member of Asma’s group, told that they are not interested to remove PBC Vice-Chairman Farogh Nasim as his one-year tenure is about to end. However, Kamran Murtaza of the same group believes that Nasim should resign from his post on the basis of morality as his group is no longer in power.
