Pendency of cases

The number of cases pending in the Supreme Court has touched the record level in the country’s history. According to a fortnightly disposal report, 42,927 cases were pending in the top court of the country as of Jan 15, says a report carried in this paper. Pending civil cases too are increasing as 23,793 petitions and 9,332 appeals are undecided. The increasing number of cases remains one of the challenges for Justice Gulzar Ahmed, the incumbent Chief Justice, who is taking to task the executive authorities on maladministration, irregular appointments and encroachment on state land. He is also fixing hearing of public interest litigation cases which were initiated during the tenure of ex-chief justice Mian Saqib Nisar. Justice Ahmed’s predecessor, Justice Asif Saeed Khosa, successfully brought judicial reforms to improve the criminal justice system. Due to his efforts, 25 years’ backlog of criminal appeals pending before the Supreme Court has almost been wiped out.

Supreme Court Bar Association President Syed Kalb-e-Hassan has expressed concern over the piling up of pending cases, and says senior lawyers are complaining about poor case management system. A section of lawyers is of the view that the apex court cannot be blamed for the rapid increase in pending cases. Since October a 10-judge full court has been hearing Justice Qazi Faiz Isa’s petition against a presidential reference. Whenever larger benches hear cases, the common litigants’ cases are affected. One ostensible reason for the pendency of such a large number of cases is the tendency on the part of lawyers to seek repeated adjournments. The law’s proverbial delay is universally well known and it is also known how the delays make litigation a costly affair and the anguish that all this causes to litigants. Cases take years, sometimes generations, to decide mostly in Third World countries, as it had been formerly the case in European countries. This is why in many countries, especially in South Asia, judges extensively quote from Charles Dickens’s works to embellish their judgments. 

Published in The Express Tribune, February 9^th, 2020.

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