ISLAMABAD, Jan 22: The first announcement Syed Qalb-i-Hassan made after being elected as vice-chairman of the Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) was that he would not attend Jan 26 meeting of the Judicial Commission (JC).

Qalb-i-Hassan, who replaced Akhtar Hussain after securing 13 votes while his opponent Syed Ayaz Zahoor obtained eight votes, told reporters outside the Supreme Court building that the decision to nominate a PBC representative to the JC would be made at a meeting to be called soon. Till then, he said, it had been recommended that the PBC would stay away from Judicial Commission meetings.

On Jan 19, Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry had to defer a meeting of the JC for Jan 26 when neither Law Minister Farooq H. Naek and Attorney General Irfan Qadir nor representatives of the PBC and provincial bar councils came to attend the meeting.

A day earlier, the AG office had informed JC secretary Dr Faqir Hussain that the AG would not attend the meeting because the commission had not been properly constituted in the absence of a PBC representative.

After completion of senior counsel Dr Khalid Ranjha’s two-year term, the PBC has not named any representative to the commission on the basis of its Nov 7, 2012 resolution, calling for deferring the nomination for the time being.

The deferment came in view of the realisation that PBC representative’s role in JC meetings was not meaningful as the council was not consulted during the preparation of lists of proposed names for appointment as judges of superior courts.

Qalb-i-Hassan, a former judge of the Islamabad High Court -- who had to quit the high office after the July 30, 2009 judgment of the Supreme Court -- had remained a member of the Punjab Bar Council and chairman of PBC’s executive committee.

After the election, PBC members, on the proposal of Hamid Khan, unanimously called upon the government to make public the reports of the Abbottabad Commission and the Commission on Missing Persons. Both the reports have been submitted to the government.

A statement issued by the PBC said the council members endorsed the recommendation of its legal education committee to introduce assessment test of law graduates seeking enrolment as advocates.

Now, after doing LLB a person would have to appear in the test to be conducted by the National Testing Service and would be offered three chances to qualify it, it said.

The introduction of the test would raise professional competency of new entrants to the legal profession and lessen the burden of the provincial bar councils to deal with a large number of applications for enrolment as advocates without proper assessment of the ability of the candidates, it said.