KARACHI: The Sindh High Court has constituted two company benches at its principal seat in Karachi and nominated as many judges to head such benches and timely dispose of cases filed under the Companies Act, 2017.

SHC Chief Justice Mohammad Shafi, who recently took over as top judge of the province, constituted the benches on Original Side of the SHC and to be headed by Justice Muhammad Faisal Kamal Alam and Justice Adnan Iqbal Chaudhary.

These special benches are set to start functioning from Monday (today), which is the first working day after two-month summer vacation at the SHC.

According to Section 5 (4) of the Company Act, 2017, one or more company benches on permanent basis must be constituted at each high court by the chief justice to hear the cases filed under the law.

Cases to be decided within a period of 120 days

Another provision said that each case has to be decided within a period of 120 days and the court may, if it is in the interest of justice, conduct the proceedings on a day-to-day basis and impose costs against any party to the proceeding causing the delay.

According to a notification, issued on July 20, by the registrar of SHC Suhail Mohammad Laghari, “In exercise of powers conferred by sub-section (4) of section 5 of the Companies Act, 2017 and in supersession of this Court’s notifications of even number dated 25-08-2018 and 08-10-2019, the Hon’ble Chief Justice has been pleased to constitute two Company Benches on original side comprising the following Hon’ble judges of this Court in the High Court of Sindh at Principal Seat Karachi”.

Initially, the then chief justice had constituted one company bench and nominated Justice Muhammad Junaid Ghaffar to head the same in 2018. Later, the SHC had notified the first two original side (OS) single-ju­dge benches as Company Benches and ask­ed them to also hear cases filed under the relevant law besides other assigned work.

However, presently various benches of the SHC are only hearing urgent nature of constitutional, criminal, civil and original side cases due to summer vacation, which ended on Aug 3.

According to a new roster sitting of SHC from Aug 5 to Aug 31, Justice Alam and Justice Chaudhary are heading single judge-bench I & IV (OS) respectively and besides service, banking, environmental, commercial and other cases, both the benches will also hear company matters.

The sources in the SHC said that presently, there were around 250 cases filed under the Company Act, 2017 pending in the high court.

As per Section 6 (11) of the act, “The petition presented before the Court shall be decided within a period of one hundred and twenty days from the date of presentation of the case and for this purpose the Court may, if it is in the interest of justice, conduct the proceedings on a day to day basis and if the Court deems fit it may impose costs which may extend to one hundred thousand rupees per day or such higher amount as the Court may determine against any party to the proceeding causing the delay”.

Published in Dawn, August 5th, 2024