Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) has decided to convene a lawyers’ convention in order to take a unanimous opinion on the Panamagate case verdict.

SCBA General Secretary Aftab Ahmed Bajwa on Wednesday told reporters that the SCBA Executive Committee would convene a meeting on May 2 to decide the date and venue for the lawyers’ convention.

The agenda of the said convention is to take the representatives of lawyers’ bodies into confidence and to develop consensus on whether to accept the verdict, as the political parties accepted it, or ask Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to step down on moral grounds.

He said that the Pakistan Bar Council vice chairman had urged the premier the other day to step down after the Panamagate verdict, but it was in his personal capacity and not the opinion of the entire legal fraternity.

Bajwa, however, maintained that they wanted to take the viewpoint of the representatives of the lawyers’ community across the country.

He also expressed reservations over the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) consisting of members of the FIA, NAB, Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, State Bank of Pakistan as well as representatives of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Military Intelligence (MI). He asked how institutions, except the ISI and the MI, could ensure transparent investigation into the matter.