ISLAMABAD: Chief Justice of Islamabad High Court (IHC) Justice Athar Minallah has invited the newly-elected president of Islamabad High Court Bar Association (IHCBA) to reform the criminal justice system to end backlog.

At present, there is a backlog of around 65,000 cases with the Islamabad judiciary - over 16,000 cases pending with the IHC and about 49,000 under progress in the district judiciary.

IHCBA president Raja Zahid Mahmood was behind bars in connection with the Feb 8 storming into the Chief Justice Block of the IHC. He was elected as the president while being incarcerated.

On March 11, Mr Mahmood wrote a letter to the IHC chief justice and regretted the Feb 8 attack on the Chief Justice Block. He also highlighted the problems being faced by the legal fraternity.

In response, IHC Registrar Sajid Baloch in a letter conveyed IHC chief justice’s felicitations to him as well as other office-bearers of the bar association. The registrar stated that the chief justice had always respected the role of the bar and taken the office-bearers on board in all matters relating to the welfare of enrolled advocates and the interests of litigants.

The letter said the chief justice “while appreciating your gesture looks forward to receiving proposals from the association regarding fulfilling the collective duty of the bench and the bar to reform the system and its procedures, so that the inherited backlog can be cleared and expeditious and inexpensive justice can be achieved for the stakeholders of the judicial system i.e. the litigants and the public at large.”

Justice Minallah assured the legal fraternity of resolving their problems in accordance with “enforced laws”.

It said the chief justice had on his own initiative taken several measures on the administrative side so as to ensure that members of the bar are facilitated in the interest of the litigants. It has remained a top priority of the IHC to shift the district courts to a state of the art judicial complex because the current embarrassingly deplorable conditions deny the actual stakeholders their right of meaningful access to the courts besides undermining the dignity of the lawyers.

Likewise, considerable work has already been accomplished in the last two and a half years to persuade the executive branch of the state to plan and develop facilities for the lawyers and the litigants.

The former officeholders of the respective bar were also meaningfully engaged in these endeavours. Regrettably, these paramount issues have been ignored in the past four decades, the letter said. The chief justice said both the bench and bar owe a duty of care towards the stakeholders because their duty and role is that of a service provider. The state has failed to provide the stakeholders inexpensive and expeditious justice and it is time for introspection.

The registrar asked the IHCBA president to send written proposals to address the core problems being faced by the litigants and the lawyers.

Published in Dawn, March 19th, 2021