Reconciliation: Hyderabad lawyers give warm welcome to SHC CJ

The short-lived tension between the bench and the bar has seemingly ended.

HYDERABAD:

The Sindh High Court’s (SHC) chief justice, Mushir Alam, whose recent statements had caused much resentment among the lawyers, received a warm welcome during his visit to four bar councils in different districts of Hyderabad division, on Monday.

In his speeches the province’s top judge emphasised on the need to maintain strong relations between the bench and the bar to make sure justice is served on time. “The relationship between the bench and the bar is like that between parents and children,”  he said while addressing the lawyers in Jamshoro. “When children get annoyed, they can be conciliated.” Alam felt that, “Lawyers should not only point out corruption [in the judiciary] but should also pursue the matter for action against such judges.”

The short-lived tension between the two sides triggered after a group of lawyers in Sukkur blamed the higher judiciary for ignoring merit in promotions of lower court judges. Justice Alam, reacting to this, had alleged that some lawyers in the Sindh Bar Council (SBC) did not want to end corruption from the judiciary. Following these comments by the CJ, members of the SBC and the Karachi Bar Association had given a call for a province-wide boycott of legal proceedings to protest against what they termed as ‘uncalled for’ remarks.



The confrontation between the bench and the bar had seemingly deepened on Thursday when the Sindh High Court had directed all judicial officers across the province to pay no heed to the SBC’s call to suspend legal proceedings. The SHC’s registrar office had issued a circular to all judges of the high court and district courts to ensure that legal proceedings weren’t disrupted.

On Monday, when the CJ visited different bars of Hyderabad division, he was accorded a generous welcome by the lawyers. “The chief justice has been warmly welcomed in Jamshoro, Matiari and Tando Muhammad Khan. In Hyderabad, both the high court and district bars will receive him cordially at his scheduled address [late on Monday evening],” the Sindh High Court Bar Association’s general secretary, advocate Ayaz Tunio, told The Express Tribune.

Meanwhile, Justice Alam, in his address at Jamshoro, informed that around 90 per cent of the cases which had been pending since before 2008 have been disposed of. By the end of July, all the remaining cases will be disposed of, he added.



On a separate note, the CJ advised young people to avoid taking recourse to court marriages and to make all efforts to get consent from their parents. “One of the reasons behind the never ending incidents of honour killing can be addressed through this,” he said. The justice advised women to make people like Benazir Bhutto as their role models. Justice Alam also addressed the district bars in Matiari and Tando Muhammad Khan.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 25^th, 2013.