Court security: Early appointment of prosecutor general urged

The office has been vacant for the last 5 months.

LAHORE:

Lahore High Court Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial on Thursday took notice of the vacant office of the Punjab prosecutor general and directed the government to fill the vacancy by March 13.

He was heading a special division bench hearing a petition questioning inadequate security measures for courts.

Additional Prosecutor General Mazhar Sher Awan told the court that the office of the Punjab prosecutor general had been lying vacant for the last five months.

“I wonder how the Prosecution Department has been functioning without a head,” the chief justice remarked.

He said the court would pass an order in this regard if the government failed to appoint the prosecutor general by the next hearing.

The judge directed the additional prosecutor general to submit a progress report about implementation of the memorandum of understanding signed between the Police and the Prosecution Departments.



Advocate Kashif Pasha, the petitioner, accused the authorities of inefficiency and taking inadequate security measures on court premises. He said this had resulted in several attacks resulting in deaths of litigants and lawyers.

He said lives of presiding officers of the court were also at risk.

He said over the last few years, killing of people in judicial custody and on premises of courts had become a common practice.

LHC reserves judgement on maintainability of petition

Justice Mazhar Ali Akbar Naqvi of the Lahore High Court on Thursday reserved judgment on maintainability of a petition challenging the use of the title ‘My Lord’ for judges of superior courts and bowing in front of them during court proceedings.

Advocate AK Dogar, the petitioner, says that the judges are addressed as ‘My Lord’, ‘Your Lordship’, and lawyers also bend their heads before the judges at their rostrum and while entering the courtrooms. He says this is was un-Islamic.

“Let us bow before God alone and no man,” he said.

He said in the United States, no judge was addressed that way. He said Article 14 of the Constitution had deemed the dignity of man as a fundamental right.

He said according to paragraph four of the Presidents’ Order printed in PLD in 1981 use of the expressions like ‘My Lord’ and “Your Lordship” in relation to a judge should be discontinued. He said the judges should only be addressed as “sir.”

He requested the court to issue directions to the governments, the Pakistan Bar Council, the Punjab Bar Council, the Lahore High Court Bar Association and he Lahore Bar Association to implement the president’s order, restraining lawyers from using the term ‘My Lord’ for judges and bowing before them.

Court appoints amicus curies

The Lahore High Court on Thursday appointed two senior advocates as amicus curies (friends of the court) for their assistance on a case against exhibition of Indian films in Pakistan.

Several local film producers and directors had filed the petition. They said smuggled Indian movies were being exhibited in Pakistanis cinemas.

They said the local film industry have been destroyed as a result.  The petitioners asked the court to restrain the Pakistan Film Censor Board from issuing NOCs to Indian movies because they were “indecent”. Justice Mansoor Ali Shah asked what criteria would be used to determine the indecency of a film. The court sought the amicus curies for assistance on this point.

The court adjourned the hearing till March 16.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 28^th, 2014.