ISLAMABAD, Nov 1: The Supreme Court disposed of 2,156 cases as against institution of 720 new cases in October 2005. Working at full strength, the ratio of disposal has been three times higher as compared to fresh cases.

According to a Supreme Court announcement, Chief Justice of Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry lauded the effort of his brother judges and expressed the hope that soon the court would succeed in considerably reducing and ultimately diminishing the huge pendency.

CJ has also appreciated the hard work done by the court staff in preparing cases for hearing and implementing the court orders.

This augurs well for the court, which has a huge pendency of cases to dispose of. The constitution of benches of the judges at the principal seat Islamabad and branch registries at the provincial headquarters coupled with strategy to prepare cause lists in advance while discouraging adjournments, apparently, worked well and served the purpose of accelerating disposal.

The chief justice had constituted benches at the principal seat and branch registries.

At the principal seat, Islamabad, a total number of 497 cases were decided as compared to 320 newly registered cases, during the same month.

At the branch registry Lahore, 1,014 cases were disposed of as compared to fresh institution of 196 cases while in Karachi 321 cases were disposed of as against 108 cases, at Peshawar 239 cases were disposed of as against 59 cases, and at Quetta 85 cases were disposed of as compared to 37 cases.

All in all, the disposal figure is 2,156 cases as against 720 fresh cases, it said.