Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Minister for Information and Broadcasting Chaudhry Fawad Hussain on Monday said that the introduction of electoral reforms were imperative to ensure free, fair, and transparent elections in the country.

“We want to hold elections on which no one could raise a finger and the electoral reforms will guarantee fair elections,” he expressed these views while talking to a delegation of District Bar Rawalpindi, Lahore High Court Bar Rawalpindi, Punjab Bar Council, and High Court Bar Multan.

The minister said that the government was well aware of the lawyers’ problems and it was the top priority of the government to solve the problems of the lawyer community. He said that his family was being known in the areas for doing politics or for adopting the lawyer profession.

He said that professional loans would be disbursed among the lawyers while the legal community below the age of 45 years would be given easy loans up to one million rupees under the Kamyab Jawan Program for the construction of their chambers.

Under the Naya Pakistan Housing Scheme, a proposal was under also consideration to give six million rupees loans to lawyers and journalists communities for the construction of 10-marla house. He said that talks have been held with NCOC head Asad Umar for establishing vaccination centres at high courts and sessions courts and further progress in this regard was expected in the next few days.

He said that efforts would be made to provide health cards to journalists and lawyers. On the demand of a housing society for the lawyers of the Rawalpindi Division, he assured arranging a meeting of the lawyer community with Rawalpindi’s commissioner. He said that the next era belongs to digitalization, modern technology and reforms which is vital to strengthening the legal system and workshops would also be organized to bring lawyers in line with modern technology.

Participants of the delegation stressed for the use of technology to make the elections transparent and demanded of the government to provide electronic voting machines for the upcoming Bar Association elections. The legal community praised the government’s move of introducing electoral reforms to ensure free, fair, and transparent elections. They also welcomed the decision to hold the workshop.