Summary Asima Jahangri and Hamid Khan Groups are fully supporting their presidential candidates.
ISLAMABAD (Dunya News) Both the contesting groups — one led by former senator Kamran Murtaza and the other by former advocate general Amanullah Kanrani (candidates for the post of SCBA president) — are claiming to have been in a comfortable position to win the elections, but observers predict a split mandate.
Special polling stations have been set in 10 big cities including Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta and Karachi where polling is underway in order to select their favorite candidate.
The Bar members can cast their votes till 5 pm today.
Election Board head Afrasyab Khan is monitoring the electoral process.
Establishment has arranged special measures for foolproof security as a precautionary measure.
Learned and renowned counsels are of the view that tough competition is likely between two presidential candidates Kamran Murtaza and Amanullah Kanrani.
The elections have generated much interest. The coveted post according to rotation will this time go to Balochistan. Unlike past years’ pro- and anti-judiciary bickering and acrimony, this time the campaign revolves around issues specific to the troubled province’s precarious law and order situation, sense of deprivation among its people and `uneven’ distribution of resources.
But the candidates and their supporters are seen complaining that fruits of the lawyers’ movement have not trickled down in real sense as the lower judiciary, the real face of the powerful institution, is still marred by allegations of corruption, lethargy, nepotism, lack of professionalism and ineptitude.
Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) Vice-President Qalbe Hassan said the SCBA elections had always been keenly watched by all and sundry since it had become a powerful body of lawyers that played an important role in national politics and acted as a bridge between two pillars of the state — the executive and the judiciary — at the time of crisis.
Kamran Murtaza’s Independent group enjoys the support of towering personalities having influence in the legal fraternity like former SCBA presidents Asma Jehangir, Yasin Azad and Ali Ahmed Kurd, Qalbe Hassan, Latif Afridi from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan High Court Association’s president Zahoor Ahmed Shahwani and his predecessor Hadi Shakeel.
Amanullah Kanrani has the support of groups led by Hamid Khan, former Punjab governor Sardar Latif Khosa, former attorney general Malik Qayyum and Advocate Mohammad Ikram Chaudhry.
In all 2,720 voters will elect the 22-member the SCBA body throughout the country. With 1,191 votes, Lahore will play obviously a defining role in changing or upsetting the results. Sindh has 453 votes, Islamabad 416, Multan 156, Bahawalpur 161 and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 267.
“I am with Amanullah Kanrani because he is son of the soil and a local who knows the problems being faced by the people of Balochistan should be elected as SCBA president,” Latif Khosa said.
But he admitted that the dynamics of this year’s elections had changed because polarisation, the hallmark of earlier polls, had dissipated. Now groupings and personal associations will be deciding factors.
Yasin Azad claimed that all major players like bars and their representatives were with Kamran Murtaza. “If the support of PTI is with Amanullah Kanrani, the ruling PML-N is with Kamran Murtaza,” he said.
Same was the view of Raja Muqsit Nawaz Khan who has already been elected additional secretary unopposed from the Kamran Murtaza group, along with three other important offices. He was confident that his group would win comfortably.
Independent candidate Rab Nawaz Raja is in the run for the post of president, but the major contest is between Mr Murtaza and Mr Kanrani.
Abdullah Kakar of the Murtaza group and Jahanzaib Khan Jadoon of the Kanrani group are contesting for the post of vice-president from Balochistan.
Syed Sardar Hussain of the Murtaza group has already been elected unopposed for the post of vice-president Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Rana Naeem Sarwar of the Kanrani group and Shah Abbas Iqbal Mian of the Murtaza group will contest for the post of vice-president Punjab.
Mohammad Sadiq Hidayatullah of the Murtaza group has been elected unopposed as vice-president Sindh.
Raja Muqsit Nawaz Khan and Raja Ghazanfar Ali Khan of the Murtaza group have been elected unopposed as additional secretary and finance secretary.
For the post of secretary, three candidates are in the field — Asif Mehmood Cheema of the Murtaza group, Azmat Ullah Chaudhry of the Kanrani group and Mohammad Aslam Pervez Mian.
