August 26, 2007	Sunday	Sha’aban 12, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Aug 25: Judicial activism being shown by the Supreme Court through public interest suo motu notices has let the neglected sections of society believe that the apex court is the only and last resort where lies redressal of their years long unattended problems.

“We have been left with no option but to file an application on a simple piece of paper that too without any court fee when nobody is coming to rescue us,” a complainant, Sohail Manzoor Bhatti, said while talking to Dawn.

He has come all the way from Jhelum with the hope that the application he filed before the Supreme Court will be paid heed to for the release of his mother and brother from the clutches of powerful local land mafia. His petition is already pending before the Lahore High Court but he is interested in transferring his case to the Peshawar High Court.

His mother, Nighat Bhatti, and brother, Iftikhar, according to the applicant, are in the illegal detention of the land mafia who had connections with the all powerful ruling clique. His earlier pleading before the President House bore no fruits, he claimed.

High expectation among ordinary citizens on judiciary has also put the staff of the Supreme Court under tremendous stress who are busy burning midnight oil in sorting out huge number of applications to fix these before benches of the court or in issuing instructions to relevant “delinquent” public departments to attend to the complaints of the individuals.

“Hardly a day goes by when the court is not receiving a huge bulk of applications for the rectification of all kind of problems faced by the downtrodden,” a court official told Dawn on condition of anonymity, adding that sometimes the number surges to 500 to 600 applications a day.

The grievances, he said, ranged from abductions especially of girls, missing persons, vanni, personal cases like service matters to lack of essential amenities like water, electricity to traffic congestions, lack of roads, jail petitions and apathy shown by different line or public departments, land grabbers or jail petitions. Majority of the applications, however, are against the highhandedness of the police.

Ironically majority of the suo motu cases on abductions involving women or poor families common in the interior parts of different provinces usually lead to politicians who belong either to the ruling clan or influential opposition.

The number of applications has increased with the reinstatement of the top adjudicator of the country after over four months of suspension, the official said.

One such application concerns the request of the widow of Sheikh Javed Qasim from Multan against a private construction firm - Khan Group of Companies - with which her late husband had entered into an agreement in 1999 for an eight Marla house.