PESHAWAR, April 20: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Bar Council’s executive committee on Friday suspended the annual elections of Peshawar High Court Bar Association (PHCBA) scheduled for Saturday (today), triggering a controversy as the election commissioner for the polls announced to hold the election as planned.

A meeting of the executive committee, presided over by its chairman Naeemuddin Khan, also announced to abolish the powers of the election commissioner, Khwaja Mohammad Khan Gara, on the ground that the commission had violated the relevant rules by preferring the PHCBA’s voters list to the bar council’s list for holding the elections.

The committee constituted a two-member election commission comprising Akhter Ali Khan and Ghulam Nabi Khan, with the directives to announce fresh schedule for the elections within a week. An official of the bar council said that over half of the PHCBA members were defaulters of the council’s dues on account of the benevolent fund and as such they should not be allowed to take part in the polls.

On the other hand, Mr Gara told media persons that the executive committee had overstepped its jurisdiction and the elections would be held in accordance with the schedule.

He said that they were bound to conduct elections in accordance with the PHCBA constitution.

He said that elections of some of the district bar associations had already been held on their respective voters list, but the council remained silent and now when the PHCBA polls were only a day’s away the council had come up with this strange order. The controversy revolves around the issue of valid voter list. The bar council says that elections of every bar association in the province, including the PHCBA, should be held on the council’s voter list, which includes only those members who have cleared their outstanding dues. The association believes that it has its own list of valid voters.

The PHCBA had fixed April 17 for clearance of its dues by the members and those who failed to deposit dues were not entitled to vote. Following that date around 1,851 members were declared entitled to cast vote. The council claims that any member should also clear the council’s dues for becoming an eligible voter in the PHCBA election.

Three candidates are in the run for the post of president of the association. They included Abdul Lateef Afridi, Ameenur Rehman and Behlol Khattak.

The same controversy had also emerged last year following which the appeal committee of Pakistan Bar Council decided in Aug 2011 that in future the elections of the PHCBA and other bar associations in the province would be held in accordance with the voters list provided by the provincial bar council.

The appeal committee last year had disposed of an appeal concerning the controversy between the PHCBA and the bar council over the voters list for the annual elections of the association, including names of defaulters of the council’s dues.