LAHORE: The Lahore High Court has directed the provincial government to operationalise within three months the Punjab Legal Aid Agency, which is supposed to provide legal services to indigent persons, especially the women, in family matters.

A full bench passed the order, deciding a set of petitions against section 14 of the Family Courts Act, 1964, which does not allow an appeal against a decree for maintenance to a child of an amount of Rs5000 or less per month.

During the hearing of the petitions, the bench learnt that the province of the Punjab, through Act No.XIX of 2018, enacted the Punjab Legal Aid Act, 2018, which provides for Punjab Legal Aid Agency to be established by the government to provide legal services to an indigent person, inter alia, in family disputes relating to divorce, maintenance, dowry, dower or custody of children.

However, the said agency has not been operationalized till date.

Justice Raheel Kamran Sheikh, who authored the verdict, observed that the adjudication of claims entails physical and psychological toil, incurring of financial resources and a degree of perseverance to succeed for the enforcement of one’s rights.

The judge noted that it is quite an ordeal for a resource-less wife and/or child to invoke jurisdiction of the family court to claim maintenance when a husband/father fails to perform his obligation in that regard, particularly in the absence of a well-established legal aid system.

To ensure effective enforcement of the rights of access to justice and fair trial, as guaranteed under Article 9 and 10A of the Constitution to women and children, the bench directed the government to operationalise the Punjab Legal Aid Agency within a period of three months to provide legal aid services to indigent persons in the family matters.

About the questions posed in the petitions, the bench declared that in terms of section 14(2)(c) of the Act, a decree for maintenance granted for an amount less than Rs5,000 per month to each of the plaintiffs is not appealable.

The bench maintained that Article 10A of the Constitution guarantees right to fair trial and due process for the determination of civil rights and obligations of a person, however, there is nothing in the language of the said article that guarantees at least one right of appeal against all such determinations.

Therefore, the bench said the impugned section 14 is not repugnant to the article 10 of the Constitution.

The bench refrained from deciding a question whether the impugned section 14 is against the injunctions of Islam, saying it is the jurisdiction of the Federal Shariat Court.

Chief Justice Muhammad Ameer Bhatti headed the bench while Justice Masud Abid Naqvi was also its member.

Published in Dawn, February 18th, 2024