ISLAMABAD: Most people who approach the courts are petitioners seeking justice, but there are also those who initiate litigation for reasons other than the redressal of their grievances.

It is no secret that the country’s judicial system is struggling to cope with a massive backlog of cases and there are many cases that have been dragging on for years without a decision.

Frivolous litigation, legal experts believe, not only overburdens the courts and disrupts their scheduling, but also causes unnecessary delays in the dispensation of justice for those with genuine grievances.

According to former Deputy Attorney General Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri, frivolous petitions are filed for various reasons: “[Habitual litigants] either want self-promotion or cheap publicity, or they’re trying to blackmail public office holders, or sometimes, they move the courts at the behest of vested interests to create unrest in some quarters.”

However, frivolous petitions don’t always go unnoticed and a number of judges have, in the past, fined a number of such petitioners. For example, Justice Athar Minallah of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) fined a citizen Rs20,000 for filing a frivolous petition challenging the appointment of Sardar Raza Khan as the chief election commissioner (CEC), in September 2014.

Shahid Orakzai, who is one of the most prolific litigants in the capital and has a reputation for filing controversial petitions, was fined for wasting the court’s time.

Senior lawyers advocate heavy fines to discourage habitual petitioners

Justice Minallah had observed that the position was vacant for quite some time and the relevant stakeholders had filled it with mutual consent and in accordance with the procedure laid down in the Constitution. Orakzai, on the other hand, argued that the ‘real stakeholders’ were not part of parliament and insisted that such an appointment would create a fuss.

However, there are many who have their doubts about his motivations.

Mr Orakzai is also a petitioner in the Lal Masjid case, currently before a Supreme Court bench. During a hearing of the case in December, Maulana Abdul Aziz’s counsel Advocate Tariq Asad stated, “everybody understands on whose behest Orakzai is appearing”, something that the lawyer took strong exception to.

But that is not to say that the courts throw out all of his petitions. Mr Orakzai was also one of the petitioners who had challenged the appointment of retired Justice Deedar Shah as chairman of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), an appointment the Supreme Court had held to be illegal.

Islamabad High Court (IHC) Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui also fined a lawyer last year for frivolous litigation. The counsel, Riaz Hanif Rahi, had challenged the judicial policy and the electoral system of the country and sought a verdict against the 2013 general elections.

Earlier, in January 2014, the same court had fined Advocate Rahi Rs100,000 for filing a petition asking for the withdrawal of security from former Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. The lawyer had also challenged the provision of a bulletproof car to Justice Chaudhry because, he claimed, the former chief justice was not entitled to any vehicles at the government’s expense.

The same lawyer recently filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the appointment of ad-hoc judges. He told Dawn that he had filed the petition in the “larger public interest”.

“I always tried to raise legal questions in my petitions,” he insisted.

Senior lawyer and Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) member Mohammad Shuaib Shaheen told Dawn frivolous litigation wastes time that could be devoted to purposeful hearings.

“It deprives genuine litigants of their turn and in addition to wasting lawyers’ time, these petitioners bring a bad name to the judicial institutions,” he further said.

He suggested that such practices can be curtailed by imposing heavy fines on the culprits, adding that legislation was necessary to ensure that when the court observed a case to be frivolous, the cost of damages should be imposed and recovered without giving the frivolous petitioner an opportunity to move an appellate forum.

Published in Dawn, January 10th, 2016