Dragging its feet: Backlog of cases pile up due to bureaucracy’s non-serious attitude

SC ruling says such situation would reduce judgments to paper

PESHAWAR: The bureaucracy in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa seems to be least bothered to comply with court orders when it comes to cases involving them. This non-serious attitude of bureaucrats has piled up legal proceedings and is also tantamount to undermining the judiciary.

Peshawar High Court Chief Justice Mazhar Alam Khan Miankhel often says 80% burden of the high court could be reduced if the government departments do their job honestly and implement court orders in letter and spirit.

The court orders are often not taken seriously when the legal proceedings are about the government. In most cases, the person in question replies when either the court attaches their salaries or warns them of contempt of court proceedings.

Compliance imperative

The executive authority is legally bound under the Constitution to comply with court orders.

Article 204 of the Constitution states that the court shall have the power to punish any person who abuses, interferes with or obstructs the process of the court in any way or disobeys any order of the court or does anything which tends to prejudice the determination of a matter pending before the court, or does any other thing which, by law, constitutes contempt of the court.

A legal expert and senior lawyer of PHC, Qazi Jawwad Ihsanullah, reiterated the stance of Miankhel on the matter, saying the burden on the court increases when the government adopts a non-serious approach to complying with court orders.

Even Article 190 of the Constitution binds the executive and judicial authorities throughout the country to act in aid of the Supreme Court.

Ways out

The judges have several options in hand to make the person in question comply with court orders. They either summon the person concerned to appear before the court, attach his/her salary or initiate contempt of court proceedings.

In most cases, while exercising judicial restraint, judges either summoned the authorities concerned or attach their salaries to make them comply with court orders, but a contempt of court proceeding is seldom started.

On June 6, a division bench of PHC ordered attachment of salary of a commandant of Frontier Constabulary for not submitting a reply in the case of an FC employee.

Similarly, Justice Qaiser Rasheed of PHC attached salary of the secretary of K-P Board of Technical Education for his failure to file a reply, despite several notices served upon him.

Expressing his anger over the non-compliance, Rasheed had said a new trend was in place where officers were least bothered to file replies even when their salaries would be attached.

“Then we have to issue their arrest warrant to make them comply with court orders,” he had commented.

Lawlessness feared

In his judgment on Contempt of Court Act, 2012 a former chief justice of Supreme Court of Pakistan, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, ruled that tendency by state functionaries to not obey court orders would lead to anarchy.

The judgment said if the state functionaries, including the high-ups of the executive body, will not comply with court orders the judgments of the court would be reduced to mere paper and the whole system of the administration of justice will become ineffective, thus leading to anarchy.

It was made clear in the judgment state functionaries were not protected from contempt.

Another lawyer, Shumail Ahmad Butt, while citing Article 5 of the Constitution says disobeying court orders or judgments is definitely disobedience of the Constitution as the article says loyalty to the state is the basic duty of every citizen.

“It doesn’t mean they don’t respect the judiciary, but they either don’t have answers of their acts or words to justify their acts in courts due to which they show reluctance to submit replies in time,” he explained.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 24^th, 2016.