July 27, 2007	Friday	Rajab 11, 1428

ISLAMABAD, July 26: The backlog of cases in the Rawalpindi bench of Lahore High Court (LHC) has crossed the four-digit figure, mostly due to the shortage of judges and the recent judicial crisis.

Lawyers, who wished not to be named, told Dawn that there were more than 13,000 cases pending before the higher court in Rawalpindi.

Despite burgeoning demands from different sections of the society as well as the judicial officers, very little efforts have been made by the government to fill the vacant seats of judges, let alone creation of new posts.

This just exposes the government lack of interest in strengthening the justice system and expediting the judicial process, the lawyers said.

It has been learnt that at present, there are 17 posts of judges lying vacant in the Lahore High Court that should ideally have 50 judges.

The backlog, which was already very high, rose further as a result of more than four months long judicial crisis sparked by the presidential reference.

From March 9 to July 20, the judiciary saw its most tumultuous period in the country’s history, during which working in courts came almost to a standstill.

Apart from this, the pace of work in courts is also very slow, which further adds to the leftover cases.

As regards the LHC Rawalpindi bench, there are usually two judges, or sometimes even one, who regularly sit in the court and deal with litigation.

In very rare cases, three or four judges are sitting at the same time, a lawyer Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui said. There are six court rooms in this bench.

When the bench was established in 1983, four judges regularly sat there and dispensed justice. But for the last two years, the trend has changed and the number of judges hearing cases has decreased instead of increasing. Therefore, work piles up speedily and problems increase for the people, judges as well as lawyers, Mr Siddiqui said.

Apart from this, the courts observe a two-month summer vacation during which only one duty judge is present to hear cases of urgent importance.

It is pertinent to mention that this year the Supreme Court did not avail these vacations in order to make up for the time wasted due to the judicial crisis.

Lawyers said that the subordinate courts should also have cancelled their vacations, adding that there was no need for such break.

Going into the history, members of the legal fraternity said this tradition had been followed since the time of the Britishers.

In the colonial period, judges from Britain would have holidays for two months in order to go back to their country and have a long rest after the hectic work here. But now there is no need for these vacations, Mr Siddiqui said.

Lawyers demanded early filling up of the vacant posts of judges in all the lower and higher courts, besides increasing the number of posts so that the judicial process was expedited and the backlog removed.