Lawyers seek restoration of court activities

Claiming that the whole country had returned to normal after the lockdown, Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) and Sindh Bar Council (SBC) lawyers demanded that court activities be restored to normalcy as well.

Addressing a press conference outside the Karachi City Court on Monday, lawyers insisted that Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Justice Gulzar Ahmed must order the restoration of court activities, adding that if this was not done, they would themselves ensure the closure of the courts.

SBC member Iftikhar Javed Qazi revealed that they had filed a request to restore judicial activities at the courts by July 1, but it was not approved. "Meanwhile, the judges continue to conduct hearings only for the cases of their choice," he complained. "An atmosphere of animosity is brewing between the judiciary and lawyers, and we may no longer support the judiciary in the face of any hardship."

Meanwhile, PBC's Mehmoodul Hassan stated that court activities were suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic, but this suspension was not applied to the country's other institutions, as the CJP had earlier ordered the restoration of trade activities.

He pointed out that while judges and public lawyers were collecting their salaries and other allowances, private lawyers had to bear their own expenses. Therefore, Hassan added, they would meet the CJP to request he pass an order calling for the payment of a monthly salary to all lawyers.

Another PBC member, Muhammad Aqil, stated that while Sindh's courts were only conducting hearings for criminal cases, the Islamabad High Court was conducting all types of hearings. "There are more civil cases than criminal cases and some of them require only quick trials," he claimed, demanding that courts be allowed to conduct hearings for all cases under a set of standard operating procedures.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 14^th, 2020.