KARACHI: The country’s superior and lower judiciaries decided 4.1 million cases against an institution of 4.06m cases last year and has already disposed of around 2.25m cases against the filing of around 2.13m new cases during the first six months of this year, the Law and Justice Commis­sion of Pakistan (LJCP) said.

According to an LJCP statement shared with Dawn, the Supreme Court of Pakistan has alone decided 11,233 cases against an institution of 8,508 cases during January-June.

“A reclining trend in the backlog of cases is evident currently, reducing the backlog to 2.1m cases (2,080,601) till June 2022 from 2.2m cases (2,162,042) in January 2021,” it said.

It stressed that Pakistan was not alone in dealing with the ballooning backlog of cases, as the issue existed across the region.

“If one looks at the statistics of neighbouring countries, it comes to light that the pendency of cases has increased manifolds [in regional countries],” it said.

The LJCP said that according to Bangladesh’s law ministry, pending cases had exceeded the 3.9m mark on Dec 31, 2020 (previously reported as 2.8m in 2014). A similarly consistent increase in pending cases has been observed in India, where, according to the National Judicial Data Grid of India, the number of pending cases has surpassed 48m.

“Considering the situation in the South Asia region, Pakistan’s situation is much better comparatively,” it said.

Published in Dawn, July 21st, 2022