PESHAWAR, Dec 14: The Access to Justice Programme (AJP) has helped the judiciary dispose of cases which had been pending for many years and now only 6,152 of the 33,535 such cases are pending in civil and sessions courts in the NWFP, Peshawar High Court Registrar Sher Shah Khan has said.

He said at a press conference here on Thursday that since the introduction of the programme in January 2003, 246,536 cases had been instituted in the district courts and 251,659 had been decided. He said the courts had for the first time decided more cases than those filed during the period.

He said the number of pending cases in civil courts had dropped from 29,708 in December 2002 to 6,100 and the disposal ratio was 79.5 per cent.

In the session courts, the number of such cases had decreased from 3,827 to 52 with a disposal ratio of 98.6 per cent.He said the percentage of old cases with the courts had decreased to four per cent, while it was 22 per cent in 2002.

“To provide speedy justice to the masses at affordable expenses, 57 additional district and sessions judges, 50 civil judges and 1,261 other employees have been appointed in the province,” Mr Shah said.

He said judicial complexes were under construction in Peshawar, Swabi, Bannu and Lakki Marwat, which would help the judiciary in early disposal of cases.

The registrar said that in-service and pre-service programmes were in place for capacity building of judicial officers. Workshops had also been held at the provincial and regional levels under the programmes, he said.

The registrar said a project for computerisation of the high court and district courts was in progress.

He said the Peshawar High Court was revamping its library and it intended to establish libraries in each district.

He said the PHC had recommended establishing a regulation wing to review the rules and regulation.

Answering a question, the registrar said that under direction of the high court, judicial officers had been visiting prisons in the province regularly and deciding cases of petty nature in jail-camp courts.

He said the sessions judges had been directed to visit prisons at least once a month.

He said a policy of incentives and reward had been introduced for judicial officers and their performance would be evaluated on yearly basis.

He said publication of judicial Estacode was a step which had been taken under the AJP.