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| October 6, 2005 | Thursday | Ramazan 1, 1426 |
Special bench to hear pleas of convicts soon: SC
ISLAMABAD, Oct 5: Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry will set up a special bench to adjudicate pending appeals of convicts languishing in jails despite completing their terms due to financial constraints.
This was stated by Supreme Court Registrar Dr Faqir Hussain while talking to mediapersons here on Tuesday.
He said legal aid would be provided to such convicts by utilizing Rs58 million under the Access to Justice Programme. The special bench will be formed in three weeks time, he said.
Soon after assuming the office, the chief justice had directed all prisons to submit complete lists of such convicts, he added. The superintendents of different prisons informed the Supreme Court that 600 convicts were languishing in jails because their appeals were pending with the apex court despite the fact that they had completed or about to complete their jail terms.
“It is the desire of the chief justice to make the apex court a model institution by bringing efficiency, professionalism in its working and weeding out corruption among the staff,” Dr Hussain said.
Out of the Rs58 million, Rs34 million have been earmarked to strengthen the subordinate judiciary, while about Rs7.54 million will be spent on provision of legal aid/empowerment and Rs2.6 million each for judicial training, legal education and research. The amount has to be spent within the current fiscal year.
The official said the special bench would also sit in the Supreme Court registries at Karachi and Lahore in addition to Islamabad.
“We would like NGOs, professionals or a group of lawyers to have access to these funds and provide legal assistance to convicts by taking up their petitions.”
The Supreme Court has also developed a criterion under which priority would be given to criminal matters involving bail petitions, death sentences, life imprisonment or cases relating to children and women.
This will facilitate the court to give priority to different cases and ensure their expeditious disposal.
He said sometimes the apex court had to take suo motu actions on individual cases but such cases reflected the overall failure of the system in our society, which was unfortunate.
About the backlog, he said the pendency which was over 30,000 when the CJP assumed the office had now been reduced considerably.
He said five or seven new posts of research associates were being created in the apex court to provide research assistance to judges on different subjects. “Judges of the Supreme Court work under heavy pressure and due to enormous workload it is difficult to do research on constitutional and other legal issues,” the registrar said.
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