ISLAMABAD: To counter the growing number of legal cases against the Capital Development Authority (CDA), the civic body has decided to strengthen its legal team.

A new policy is also being devised to improve the legal team’s performance in various courts.

Due to the high number of cases, the authority has been facing difficulties to present itself in the courts.

“We need to do something to manage the litigation issues; this is becoming a serious tool for manipulators who have cornered CDA from all sides,” the CDA spokesman, Asim Khichi, said, adding that “we are not only facing a financial loss, but many projects are also being delayed due to lengthy court cases.”

Currently, the CDA is facing 4,223 cases; 3,050 are pending in civil courts, 650 cases are in the Islamabad High Court (IHC), 587 are related to human rights and 36 cases are pending with the Supreme Court.

To enhance its legal strength, the CDA Board has recently decided to include one legal adviser, two additional legal advisers and two assistant legal advisers in its legal wing.

The authority has also established new standard operating procedures (SOPs) for its legal department. These SOPs include diverting more cases to an external team of lawyers, whereas officials of the legal department shall pay more attention to the managerial work.

“The situation is getting serious and the statistics speak for themselves. We are getting more cases in a year than the number of cases being disposed of,” the official added.

In the year 2013, 1,666 new cases were filed against the CDA in the lowers courts, whereas only 1,035 cases were decided.

At the same time, among the new cases and appeals, 322 additional cases were filed in the IHC, but only 139 cases were disposed of by the IHC in 2013.

On the contrary, the Supreme Court disposed of 27 cases pertaining to CDA while 14 new cases were filed with it in 2013.

The other major change made in the SOPs to manage the court cases is to involve the relevant department in the litigation issues.