ISLAMABAD: The federal government intends to amend a law to punish publishers for committing mistakes in printing ordinances, official rules, acts, regulations, bylaws and other statutory instruments which sometimes leads to serious consequences causing loss to litigants.

The information was provided to a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court headed by Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja which had taken notice of an incorrect version of Section 23 of the Contract Act 1872 and misprinting of certain sections of the Patent Ordinance 2000 in relevant manuals.

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Deputy Attorney General Sohail Mehmood informed the court that certain amendments had been proposed to the Law Reports Act 1875 and after its approval by the cabinet the publishers and printers committing such mistakes would be penalised. They will have to pay Rs100,000 in fine and spend six months behind bars in case of non-payment.

The statutory instruments are first published in the relevant official gazette and then by

private printers who are accused of making glaring mistakes while publishing the instruments in the form of handbooks, manuals and journals.

The court directed the federal and provincial law secretaries to come up on Wednesday with a deadline for making the entire statute book available both in the hard form and on websites of the law departments with translations in Urdu and languages prevailing in the provinces.

Sohail Mehmood later told Dawn that federal laws needed to be translated into Urdu and other languages alone ran into 5,000-6,000.

“The situation represented by the present case is alarming and may be one of the contributing causes of lawlessness which prevails in our society,” Justice Khawaja observed. He said it was obvious that where applicable laws were not available to citizens, there could be little expectation that they would be able to abide by the laws.

He said there was a talk of eliminating terrorists all over the country but noted that anti-terrorism law was not found on the government’s website. He added that even media houses had never been provided the valid list of proscribed outfits included in Schedule IV of the Anti-Terrorism Act.

Earlier, the court had referred the matter of mistakes in the printing of laws to the bar councils because the organisations under the Legal Practitioner and Bar Council Act 1973 are free to take action against the delinquents.

But neither the bar councils nor the federal and provincial governments had taken any interest, adversely impacting the administration of justice.

The court said it was surprising that there was in fact no official publication whether in hard form or on internet which could provide accurate and error-free version of laws, including the Anti-Terrorism Act. “The website too is not accessible,” the court regretted, adding that there was no possible means available to the citizens to know what the statute book contained.

At the last hearing on Jan 8, the court had expressed displeasure when it was informed that no compendium of statutes was available even on the website of the federal law ministry, rather grossly inadequate information was available.

The court had observed that it was the right of people to have full information about the laws applied to them.

On Monday, Justice Qazi Faez Isa, a member of the bench, regretted that to learn about the laws of Pakistan “we have to visit the website of the United States”.

HUMAN SMUGGLING: The same bench sought details from the Federal Investigation Agency about the cases registered against those involved in sending Pakistanis abroad through illegal means.

The details should include how many challans have been submitted to courts against those accused of human smuggling, how many accused have been sentenced and what were the reasons for their acquittals.

The court issued the directive on an application filed by Abid Hussain whose brother Amjad Hussain had gone missing on his way to Greece from Gwadar in a boat four years ago.

The case will be taken up on Feb 4.

Published in Dawn January 20th , 2015

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