Denying justice
The CM also needs to be reminded of the lack of merit in the appointment of government law officers
Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah sounded startling when he informed the provincial assembly on Monday that there were only 524 district public prosecutors to handle no less than 42,351 criminal cases pending in various courts across the province. Why can’t the Sindh government hire/appoint adequate number of law officers to finish with this backlog of cases? The CM came out with the usual mantra to answer the question that his province is being deprived of the money and its due share in the revenues by the federal government.
“The law department has written to us for the appointment of law officers, but there is an acute shortage of funds, so we are not considering appointing new officers at the moment,” he said. The CM, however, insisted that notwithstanding the shortage of public prosecutors and the cases pending in the courts, his government was committed to providing people easy access to justice. And in this regard, he referred to the alternative dispute resolution mechanism evolved by his government to lessen the burden on the judiciary.
While there seemed to be no immediate end to this ongoing rift and the political point-scoring between Sindh and the Centre, in the ultimate analysis it is the common man and ordinary litigants who continue to suffer due to these shortcomings in the justice delivery system. It is not only the shortage of public prosecutors that is hurting the system, there are many other factors too. The recent reaction of the Pakistan Bar Council and its affiliate bodies in provinces to the establishment of model courts and a decision relating to sections 22A and 22B of the Criminal Procedure Code clearly indicated the extent to which the legal fraternity could go in order to safeguard its own collective interests irrespective of how much it added to the suffering of the common man.
The CM also needs to be reminded of the lack of merit in the appointment of government law officers which in turn becomes an added obstacle to the fair and speedy delivery of justice.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 24th, 2019.
“The law department has written to us for the appointment of law officers, but there is an acute shortage of funds, so we are not considering appointing new officers at the moment,” he said. The CM, however, insisted that notwithstanding the shortage of public prosecutors and the cases pending in the courts, his government was committed to providing people easy access to justice. And in this regard, he referred to the alternative dispute resolution mechanism evolved by his government to lessen the burden on the judiciary.
While there seemed to be no immediate end to this ongoing rift and the political point-scoring between Sindh and the Centre, in the ultimate analysis it is the common man and ordinary litigants who continue to suffer due to these shortcomings in the justice delivery system. It is not only the shortage of public prosecutors that is hurting the system, there are many other factors too. The recent reaction of the Pakistan Bar Council and its affiliate bodies in provinces to the establishment of model courts and a decision relating to sections 22A and 22B of the Criminal Procedure Code clearly indicated the extent to which the legal fraternity could go in order to safeguard its own collective interests irrespective of how much it added to the suffering of the common man.
The CM also needs to be reminded of the lack of merit in the appointment of government law officers which in turn becomes an added obstacle to the fair and speedy delivery of justice.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 24th, 2019.