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PAKISTAN : APPENDICES
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not more frequently appointed to the High Courts and Chief Courts of Judicature. Since the creation of these Courts only three Mahomedan lawyers have held these honourable appointments, all of whom have fully justified their elevation to the Bench. At the present moment there is not a single Mahomedan Judge sitting on the Bench of any of these Courts, while there are three Hindu Judges in the Calcutta High Court, where the proportion of Mahomedans in the population is very large, and two in the Chief Court of the Punjab, where the Mahomedans form the majority of the population. It is not, therefore, an extravagant request on our part that a Mahomedan should be given a seat on the Bench of each of the High Courts and Chief Courts. Qualified Mahomedan lawyers eligible for these appointments can always be found, if not in one province then in another. We beg permission further to submit that the presence on the Bench of these Courts of a Judge learned in the Mahomedan Law will be a source of considerable strength to the administration of justice.
Municipal Representation
As Municipal and District Boards have to deal with important local interests affecting to a great extent the health, comfort, educational needs and even the religious concerns of the inhabitants, we shall, we hope, be pardoned if we solicit for a moment your Excellency’s attention to the position of Mahomedans thereon before passing to higher concerns. These institutions form, as it were, the initial rungs in the ladder of self-government, and it is here that the principle of representation is brought home intimately to the intelligence of the people, yet the position of Mahomedans on these Boards is not at present regulated by any guiding principle capable of general application, and practice varies in different localities. The Aligarh Municipality, for example, is divided into six wards and each ward returns one Hindu and one Mahomedan Commissioner, and the same principle we understand is adopted in a number of Municipalities in the Punjab and elsewhere, but in a good many places the Mahomedan tax-payers are not adequately represented. We would, therefore, respectfully suggest that the local authority should in every case be required to declare the