New judicial policy
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Dawn, Pakistan
Tuesday, 02 Jun, 2009
HAVING gone into effect from Monday, the new judicial policy could radically alter the legal landscape and remove a major source of grievance for the people if it is implemented with sincerity. Rightly, the focus of the far-reaching decisions taken by the National Judicial (policymaking) Committee on Saturday seems to be on the speedy disposal of cases. The backlog of cases is a commentary on the working of our judicial system: 1.6 million cases pending, 140,000 of them with the superior judiciary alone. This shows how the judicial system has failed to deliver and how its working has to be overhauled if it is to provide justice without delay. Cases, both criminal and civil, drag on for years and sometimes take decades to be resolved. Persons seeking justice either get tired and give up or ‘phase out’. There are many reasons for this painful wait for justice. The number of judges is far below the minimum required to cope with the staggering number of pending cases to which new ones are added daily. While every society has its share of civil and criminal cases, a society like Pakistan’s needs constant revisions in its legal system to cope with the phenomenal rise in crime and litigation. The rise in acts of terror alone has saddled the judiciary with thousands of cases across the country. Even though separate courts — ATCs — deal with them, a large majority fall victim to judicial sloth and remain undecided, sometimes for years. With such a slow process of justice, it is no wonder that many people prefer to turn to jirgas and their ilk hoping for a quicker solution to their various disputes.
Now the Supreme Court and all the high courts will decide pending cases within a year, the period for Balochistan being reduced to six months. This is understandable because cases related to the insurgency there have piled up and need to be decided with speed. Similarly, periods of six months and one year have been fixed for criminal cases according to the punishment they entail. Also, prison officials and SHOs are not found to be very prompt in bringing the accused to court. The committee’s decisions are wide-ranging and include among others the computerisation of court records. It remains to be seen whether the courts implement the decisions in a manner that challenges old attitudes and makes our judiciary more responsive to the needs of the people.
Source
Tuesday, 02 Jun, 2009
HAVING gone into effect from Monday, the new judicial policy could radically alter the legal landscape and remove a major source of grievance for the people if it is implemented with sincerity. Rightly, the focus of the far-reaching decisions taken by the National Judicial (policymaking) Committee on Saturday seems to be on the speedy disposal of cases. The backlog of cases is a commentary on the working of our judicial system: 1.6 million cases pending, 140,000 of them with the superior judiciary alone. This shows how the judicial system has failed to deliver and how its working has to be overhauled if it is to provide justice without delay. Cases, both criminal and civil, drag on for years and sometimes take decades to be resolved. Persons seeking justice either get tired and give up or ‘phase out’. There are many reasons for this painful wait for justice. The number of judges is far below the minimum required to cope with the staggering number of pending cases to which new ones are added daily. While every society has its share of civil and criminal cases, a society like Pakistan’s needs constant revisions in its legal system to cope with the phenomenal rise in crime and litigation. The rise in acts of terror alone has saddled the judiciary with thousands of cases across the country. Even though separate courts — ATCs — deal with them, a large majority fall victim to judicial sloth and remain undecided, sometimes for years. With such a slow process of justice, it is no wonder that many people prefer to turn to jirgas and their ilk hoping for a quicker solution to their various disputes.
Now the Supreme Court and all the high courts will decide pending cases within a year, the period for Balochistan being reduced to six months. This is understandable because cases related to the insurgency there have piled up and need to be decided with speed. Similarly, periods of six months and one year have been fixed for criminal cases according to the punishment they entail. Also, prison officials and SHOs are not found to be very prompt in bringing the accused to court. The committee’s decisions are wide-ranging and include among others the computerisation of court records. It remains to be seen whether the courts implement the decisions in a manner that challenges old attitudes and makes our judiciary more responsive to the needs of the people.
Source
Labels: Judicial Policy, Judiciary, Justice
posted @ 11:34 AM,
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