LHC comes to Faisalabad

FAISALABAD: Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry has finally supported the move to establish a bench of Lahore High Court (LHC) in Faisalabad and declared it a legal right of the lawyers and 15 million people of the region.

This is the first time that a head of the country’s judiciary has announced acceptance for a longstanding demand of the people of Faisalabad, Jhang, Toba Tek Singh, Chiniot and their adjoining districts. The CJP backed the demand of the citizens of Faisalabad and gave his assurances for the setting up an LHC bench in the district directly, when a 45-member delegation of the Faisalabad District Bar Association (DBA) held a meeting with the CJP in Islamabad on Thursday.

Delegation members in their written statement mentioned that CJP had also assured them that he would personally consult the LHC Chief Justice Khawaja Muhammad Sharif and announce the news to the public and lawyers of the Faisalabad region by the next day.

Faisalabad Bar members said that justice needed to be accessible for people. “We need to bring the courts near to people and setting up a bench of the High Court in Faisalabad is a legal duty of the government,” a Faisalabad DBA member said.

Two weeks ago, the Punjab government sent a summery to the LHC Chief Justice Khawaja Muhammad Sharif under Article 198(4) after fulfilling the legal requirements and recommended that a new bench of the court be established in Faisalabad. Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif approved the motion and signed the summery on July 5, 2010 and the draft was then sent to the LHC chief justice through the Punjab Law Ministry secretary. The summary mentioned that at present the LHC benches were working in Lahore, Rawalpindi, Multan and Bahawalpur and that the next LHC bench ought to be established in Faisalabad.

People and lawyers in Faisalabad have launched a vigorous campaign for the past 25 years for the establishment of an LHC bench in the district and previous governments offered several assurances in this regard but this is the first time that practical steps are being taken by the present regime to grant this long standing demand.

During the lawyers movement for the restoration of the judiciary, former President Pervez Musharraf through then LHC Chief Justice Iftikhar Hussain assured that a high court bench would be established in Faisalabad with a condition to cancel the address of the then suspended Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry in Faisalabad but local lawyers refused to accept this proposal.

General Pervez Musharraf during a referendum campaign also used this demand as a tactical tool and asked Faisalabad’s lawyers to support his referendum but the proposal was rejected by the lawyers. All trade bodies, city district government, town councils, industrialists and labour organisations and many people belonging to cross sections of the society of Faisalabad support the new move.

The Faisalabad District Bar Association, with the support of a number of civil society bodies, had sent a letter to the Punjab government in March this year threatening the launch of a civil disobedience campaign if the government failed to establish an LHC bench in the district. A study report in this regard notes that 43 per cent cases in the LHC pertain to the Faisalabad region and the distance of Faisalabad from Lahore is over 150 kilometers, which legally merits the establishment of a separate bench.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 17^th, 2010.