Overseas Pakistanis Cell receives 2,000 irrelevant cases

Scrutiny carried out in light of LHC judgment

LAHORE:

A cell set up by Lahore High Court to address complaints of overseas Pakistanis has received more than 2,000 cases that do not fall under the category.

Sources told The Express Tribune that the Overseas Pakistanis Cell of LHC recently detected the wrongly referred complaints during a scrutiny of over 4,000 pending cases across Punjab.

The scrutiny was carried out in light of a judgment of Justice Jawad Hassan.

The more than 2,000 cases that do not fall under the overseas category were referred to the courts dealing with routine proceedings. The petitioners had reportedly pretended to be overseas Pakistanis had filing their cases, although they did not fall in the category.

Meanwhile, the Overseas Pakistanis Cell has dealt with most of the over 2,000 genuine cases and only 700 of them are pending.

The highest number of cases handled by the cell is over 700 from Lahore, followed by 175 in Faisalabad, 160 in Vehari, 132 in Gujrat, over 100 in Rawalpindi, 90 in Sialkot, 75 in Sheikhupura, 69 in Guranwala and 65 in Sahiwal. Only one case is pending in Mianwali.

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When asked about the reason behind pendency of the cases, the sources claimed that sometimes the lawyers misled the overseas complainants.

Quoting a case, they said Sana Gul, a resident of Dubai, made a phone call to the cell, complaining why her case was not proceeding ahead. After probing into the matter, the cell informed her that no one had appeared on her behalf.

The plaintiff changed her lawyer and her case was decided within weeks, the sources added.

They said a proper mechanism was needed to monitor follow-up of cases at the level of district judiciary.

The petitioners file cases directly in the Overseas Pakistanis Cell of LHC or the Overseas Pakistanis Commission forwards them to the cell. After that the director general district judiciary forwards the cases to the relevant courts with directions to address them within the time fames set for different issues.

The director general also decides whether a matter should be sent to the district judiciary, overseas commission or the relevant courts dealing with routine cases, the sources added.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 4^th, 2021.