Asma’s group secures SCBA chair, two VP slots

LAHORE: Barrister Syed Ali Zafar of Independent Group led by Asma Jahangir was elected on Thursday as the president of Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) for the year 2015-16, defeating his rival Pir Kaleem Khurshid of Hamid Khan’s Professional Group with a considerable margin of 278 votes.
Ali Zafar bagged 1,182 votes while his rival 904 votes from all the polling stations across the country.
Asma’s Independent Group emerged victorious in the SCBA elections for the sixth consecutive year. The winning streak started in 2010 with the victory of Asma when she had broken Professional Group’s series of success.
Ali Zafar belongs to Punjab as this year the president was to be elected from Punjab under the rotation policy. He is the son of a senior lawyer and constitutional expert SM Zafar who was also elected as SCBA president way back in 1976. SM Zafar was also elected as senator on PML-Q ticket.
However, Asad Manzoor Butt of Professional Group notched the slot of secretary, defeating his rival Aftab Ahmad Bajwa of Independent Group with a close margin of 30 votes. Butt bagged 1,038 votes against 1,008 of Bajwa.
Abdullah Kakar and Syed Sardar Hussain of the Independent Group were elected vice-presidents from Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa respectively, while Syed Jamil of Professional Group grabbed the slot reserved for Sindh.
In Punjab, the election for vice-president became controversial after Hamid-Khan-backed Tabinda Islam bagged 1,018 votes against her rival Bakhtiar Ali Sial who got 1,015 votes. However, Asma objected to the nine rejected votes after which the presiding officer forwarded the case to the chief returning officer in Islamabad for a final decision.
Soon after the announcement of result, wild celebration erupted among the supporters of winning candidates as they started dancing on drumbeat. They were distributing sweets and hugging each other in jubilation. Air was reverberated with thunderous slogans in favour of the winning candidates.
In his victory speech, Ali Zafar said he would live up to the expectation of the legal fraternity, adding that independence of the judiciary would be his central aim.
He said lawyers’ movement was started in order to protect the legal system and the independence of judiciary. He said the bar would not allow judiciary’s independence to get affected if, by the hands of the establishment, the judiciary of the country was ever threatened. However, he said, the independence of the judiciary did not mean that the judge should be biased.
APP and correspondent from Bahawalpur add: Ali Zafar bagged 520 votes from Lahore polling station, with his rival securing 396 votes. A total of 923 voters, out of 1,174 registered voters in Lahore, exercised their right to elect new cabinet.
In Bahawalpur, Ali Zafar managed a 20-vote lead by securing 43 votes out of 66 polled votes. A total of 84 voters were registered at the city’s polling station.