LAHORE, March 30: Federal Minister for Law, Justice and Human Rights Chaudhry Mohammad Wasi Zafar said here on Thursday that the government was considering establishment of high courts at the divisional level in a bid to restructure the judiciary and ensure speedy and inexpensive justice.
Speaking at a Supreme Court Bar Association-sponsored seminar on “Reforms for speedy justice,” the minister said his ministry was preparing a draft law on the proposed divisional high courts where civil, criminal and commercial disputes would be adjudicated. He said puisne judges would be appointed at the courts to take judicial and administrative decisions.
The federal government, Mr Zafar said, had taken a decision on restructuring of the superior judiciary recently as a step to ensure administration of justice at a lower administrative tier for which high courts’ rules were being amended. This would be a step even beyond the high court benches and would go a long way in establishing a just socio-economic order, he added.
The minister, however, did not clarify as to what would be the role of high court chief justices if puisne judges were to take judicial and administrative decisions at the proposed courts. Such a question was raised during proceedings of the seminar which he parried.
Responding to the concern expressed by SCBA president Malik Mohammad Qayyum on the need to change 200-year old court procedures in criminal and civil litigation, the minister said the National Assembly was scheduled to enact new laws in its next session which incorporated 200 amendments to the Civil Procedure Code, Criminal Procedure Code and the Pakistan Penal Code as part of reforming laws.
He said the government was also emphasising on making arbitration laws which were accepted internationally. This, he said, was part of the alternative dispute resolution which had emerged a phenomenon across the world. He said the National Assembly’s standing committee was already whetting a law on the alternative dispute resolution.
The minister said the government had selected Karachi for a pilot project in the alternative dispute resolution regime with the establishment of a court to resolve commercial disputes to begin with.
As for civil litigation, he said, the Civil Procedure Code was being overhauled with a view to expediting disposal of cases. As an example, he said, section 151-A was being added to the CPC with the objective that litigation against any government department would follow a notice to the department head who would be obliged to redress the grievance within a month. If the process failed, the aggrieved party would have a right to file a suit against the department.
Mr Zafar said a dispute would have to be resolved within 90 days under the alternate dispute resolution system for which the CPC was being amended to add section 89 which would ensure the process of service to parties was completed in one day.
He said the government was also focusing on quality legal education for which a judicial academy was being set up with the status of a university. The academy would ensure proper legal education which would improve the legal profession and overall the judicial environment.
About objections raised on the ADB-sponsored Access to Justice Programme, the minister said schemes under the programme were being proposed and executed by the judiciary itself and the government was only releasing funds for the schemes to provincial chief justices.
In his address of welcome, SCBA president Malik Mohammad Qayyum said special laws had failed to speed up justice as was the case with anti-terrorism courts which were taking years in deciding cases although the law stipulated only 30 days for the final order.
He said the superior and subordinate judiciary could be functional only if it was working under the common law. He also pleaded for dissolution of high courts benches which, he said, had hardly met the objective of administering speedy and inexpensive justice.
Mr Qayyum also argued in favour of equitable representation of provinces in the Supreme Court. He was of the view that appointment of ad hoc and additional judges had weakened the superior judiciary which was already under tremendous extraneous pressure.
