SC’s human rights cell: Less judicial activism means fewer complaints

Human rights cell receiving 80 complaints per day against 250 in 2011


Hasnaat Malik June 21, 2016
Human rights cell receiving 80 complaints per day against 250 in 2011. PHOTO: REUTERS

ISLAMABAD: The ratio of filing applications in the Supreme Court’s human rights cell has decreased after the retirement of chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

After his restoration in March 2009, the former chief justice had established a human rights cell under the supervision of a director general. According to the Supreme Court’s annual report for 2010-11, the cell used to receive 250 applications on a daily basis against different government departments. However, it is receiving around 80 complaints now.

A senior SC official believesthe main reason for the decrease in the number of complaints is that judicial activism that was the hallmark of Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s era has almost ended. He added that the former chief justice was very fond of media publicity, and because of this, the Supreme Court’s PR office keenly watched the activities of the cell. That is not the case now. Today, judges are not interested in publicity and the activities of the HR cell are not being publicised in the media.

Meanwhile, Supreme Court Bar Association president Ali Zafar, while talking to The Express Tribune, appreciated the policy of the incumbent judiciary to stay away from such publicity stunts, adding the same trend is being followed all over the world.

He also stated that contrary to Justice Iftikhar’s era, the incumbent judiciary is entertaining cases of public interest on merit, which is widely backed by bar associations, adding now it has been exposed that how public interest litigation was misused in the past.

Meanwhile, the SC PR office in a statement stated that Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali has reviewed the performance of the last six months of the human rights cell.

The chief justice was informed that the cell is receiving an average 2,500 applications per month. The backlog of applications in the cell on December 1, 2015 was 10,750 applications. As 14,893 new applications were instituted during the period from December 1, 2015 to May 31, 2016, the progressive total of pending applications came to 25,343. Out of these, 15,740 applications were disposed of during this period. The backlog on May 31, 2016 remained 9,903.

These applications included the complaints of overseas Pakistanis regarding delay in the issuance of CNOP machine readable passports, illegal dispossession of properties, usurpation of inherited properties, lack of qualified professional legal advice, fraud, etc. Moreover, action was also taken on individual complaints carrying public issues like flaws in the public healthcare system, cases from police despotism, administrative anomalies, tyrannies by powerful class, threats to minorities and their place of worship, cases of karo-kari and wani, matters of non-payment of pension of retired employees and delayed payment of salaries to low-level government employees. Overall relief was provided to 62% of applications and frivolous applications have been discouraged.

The chief justice, showing his satisfaction over the performance of the cell, has directed the DG HR cell to ensure proper and timely compliance of the court’s directives by public functionaries.

He also directed him to put a draft proposal/mechanism to check slackness by departments in such matters.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 18th, 2016.

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