March 30, 2007	Friday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 10, 1428

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RAWALPINDI, March 29: The independence and separation of the judiciary from the executive has resulted in a visible improvement in various aspects of the judicial system. However, it was done with haste which created problems for the executive, the judiciary and other stakeholders in the justice system, says an Asian Development Bank (ADB) publication.

The current major issue in strengthening the judiciary is to deal with challenges threatening to reverse the fruits of separation, says Justice (retired) Shafiur Rahman in the publication titled ‘Strengthening the criminal justice.’ The ADB publication evaluated the criminal justice systems in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.

Justice Rahman said despite the visible good brought about by the separation, the process has not been spared from problems. Due to oversight of some factors, complications arose after the initial, albeit sudden, sweep of separation. Unprepared for consequences it failed to anticipate the institutional and administrative bottlenecks.

though the separation of the judiciary from the executive has been accomplished, such a radical change is naturally accompanied by teething problems that cannot be ignored. Concerted action is therefore required - the government to provide the funds, the judiciary to lead and the people to support for the process to succeed.

The problem underlying the foregoing issue is the insufficient budgetary allocation for the supreme court. The apex court has consistently received a very small percentage of the national budget: 0.01 per cent from 1993 to 2001, 0.02 per cent from 2001 to 2004 and 0.017 per cent in fiscal year 2004-05. It received Rs140,736,000 in fiscal year 2004-05 and Rs109,497,997 in 2003- 04.

He said there had been various studies on the judiciary but almost none of them reviewed the logistical and infrastructural shortages within the judiciary. The 1978 committee alone examined this issue but it also confined its evaluation to the civil works. Currently, the high courts and the district courts suffer a substantial shortage which is likely to increase with the promulgation of new laws separating criminal and civil cases, dividing civil procedure into pre-trial and trial and providing better monitoring, inspection and supervision mechanisms of the subordinate courts.

He said the compensation and pension benefits in the superior courts are reasonable and free from interference, but district court judges suffer a different fate. Their emoluments are based on grade pay which is common to other services of the federation or the province. Efforts to provide a separate pay scale have not succeeded and only a provisional judicial allowance has been given. This matter has to be addressed.

The need for proper training courses is now greater because of the change of system. Currently, training is not compulsory for any class of judges. At the federal level there is a well- established Federal Judicial Academy capable of accommodating and training about 50 trainees at a time.

There should be compulsory pre-service, in-service and advanced courses for judicial officers. The existing training system has not so far been made a part of the system and attendance is purely voluntary and discretionary upon the high courts.

These problems are proving to be formidable, threatening to reverse the separation that has been done half a century ago. Immediate but well thought-out solutions to these problems must be implemented without delay. Otherwise, the experience will degenerate into a source of negative lessons instead of being a model worthy of emulation, he added.