Multan High Court Bar Association office-bearers have threatened to launch a protest drive in Southern Punjab on allowing or instigating Sahiwal clients to file petitions before the principal seat of High Court instead of Multan bench under the fresh procedures.
Addressing a press conference, the Bar president, Mehmood Ashraf Khan, General secretary Qari Ikramul Haq and Khawaja Obaidur Rehman on Monday said Punjab Agriculture Minister Arshad Khan Lodhi had conspired in the past to include Sahiwal district at LHC principal seat. However, this conspiracy invited a strong resentment and protest by lawyers and they foiled the ministers' conspiracy.
They said earlier Pakpattan district was attached with the principal seat, transfer of cases of monetary disputes exceeding Rs 5 million and banking corporate laws to the principal seat.
Now influential persons have again been conspiring for disaffiliation of Sahiwal from LHC Multan bench. The present LHC chief justice played a key role in detachment of Pakpattan district on his personal wish. The MHCBA office-bearers lamented that the people at the helm of affairs in Lahore had always treated Multan step-motherly.
They claimed that the resources of Multan had always been used for the development of other areas while the 'city of saints' was deliberately denied of its share in the development.
They maintained that some 'narrow-minded' people had never approved the creation of Multan bench and their ill-intentions sometimes manifested in writ petitions against the very existence of the bench and sometimes in the curtailment of its powers and jurisdiction. They vowed that they would not allow further exploitation of the people of south Punjab.
"In the given circumstances, we are compelled to demand a separate administrative provincial unit of south Punjab so that its resources should be spent on the well being of its people," they asserted. They claimed that the performance of both the bar and the bench of Multan was better than the rest of Punjab and demanded that it should be given powers equal to the principal seat.
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