Law ministry disposes of '99% cases during last 20 months'

Official statement says role of law ministry is often downplayed 'but it has huge responsibility'

ISLAMABAD: The Ministry of of Law and Justice has "efficiently" disposed of 99 per cent cases during the last 20 months out of almost 60,600 cases received, the spokesperson said in a statement on Thursday.

The law ministry, which is an advisory service organisation that provides services to all the offices of the federal and provincial governments on legal, judicial and constitutional matters, "has just around 1% pending cases to date".

The maximum numbers of cases were disposed of by the solicitor wing of the ministry with 0% pendency which deals with the litigation of the federal government and "tenders opinions to various ministries/divisions/departments/organisations and offices on legal questions arising out of the Statutes and Rules of Business, 1973".

In addition to that, the official communique said the solicitor wing of the deals with nominations of law officer, legal advisers and special prosecutors.

"The Solicitor Wing of the Ministry received 24,753 cases since August 2018 and disposed of all the cases timely."

Moreover, the statement also stated that the Drafting and Legislation Wing of the law ministry disposed of 8,134 cases in the aforementioned period.



It said the wing is responsible for "scrutinising, vetting and as the case may be, drafting of Principal and Subordinate legislation, received from various Ministries and Divisions of the Federal Government".

"During the process of vetting and drafting, the wing also tenders advice on the competency of parliament to legislate on the proposed legislative proposals," it added.

According to the statement, the role of the ministry is often downplayed since it is an advisory service organisation and does not deal with megaprojects, public welfare initiatives and inaugurations.

"But as a matter of fact the ministry has a huge responsibility since a great deal of the business of the government depends on it," it said, adding that Law Minister Farogh Naseem and secretary Khashiur Rehman are fully cognisant of this fact and encourage the officials to ensure 0% pendency.

Besides litigation and drafting, the law ministry deals with the cases of legal opinion received from different ministries, matters pertaining to interpretation of law, mercy petitions of the condemned prisoners, prepares parawise comments on the writ petitions received from the solicitor wing, filed by the aggrieved persons against the decisions of the President of Islamic Republic of Pakistan in Wafaqi Mohtasib and federal tax ombudsman.

"The law ministry has vetted numerous draft agreements, contracts, treaties, conventions, MoUs and protocols etc from legal point of view. The Contract Wing of the Ministry received 2,145 cases since August, 2018 and all have been disposed of timely and competently."

The external wing of the ministry disposed of 12,022 cases, the research and opinion wing disposed of 1,306 cases and administration wing received 10,507 cases out of which 10,506 have been disposed of, according to the statement.