KARACHI, Oct 6: The Senior Puisne Judge of the Sindh High Court, Justice Sabihuddin Ahmed, emphasized on Saturday the need for concerted efforts for tiding over delay in justice delivery system by the judiciary, government, bar and the general public.

He was speaking on the first day of a two-day “Delay Reduction Workshop for Strengthening of Institutional Capacity for Judicial and Legal Reforms.” It is a project of the courts of Pakistan, supported by the Asian Development Bank with technical assistance from the Asia Foundation.

The participants were informed that at the end of August this year the backlog of pending cases in Sindh had touched the mark of 125,897, which represented a grim picture of the working of judiciary.

The view that the justice delivery system needed to be changed should be reviewed with caution, said Justice Ahmed adding that in societies with wide economic and social disparities, it might not be possible to dispense even- handed justice through indigenous methods. The system of Jirga trial struck down by the Supreme Court might be kept in view, he emphasized.

He said judges must always keep in mind that they were dealing with living human beings who had approached the court in distress. They needed to sympathize with the suffering of victims of injustice while granting adjournments.

As far as possible, he said, cases should be decided on merit as provisions for interim relief were often misused.

Justice Ahmed also emphasized the need for improving working conditions of the judges besides providing necessary facilities for improving their efficiency.

The bar, he said, had an equally important to play. He pointed out that cases were often adjourned because of preoccupation of lawyers elsewhere or due to their unpreparedness. A judge, he said, was greatly handicapped in deciding a case in the absence of assistance from the bar. Members of the bar, especially in big cities, needed to organize themselves in large groups to ensure that all cases were duly attended and proceeded with on a date of hearing, he added.

He was of the view that public attitude also needed to be changed and the worth of legal services needed to be recognized and rewarded. People should not feel aggrieved by an honest advice of a counsel, suggesting that a matter might need not be pursued in court, and proper remuneration should be paid for such honest advice.

A major cause of delay was frivolous litigation stemming, inter alia, from the above. He said slogans such as “justice at the doorstep” and “cheap and inexpensive justice” had multiplied delay. At times courts were set up in remote areas whose support facility, ie a qualified bar, library or places for detention of prisoners were inadequate.

Justice Shafiur Rahman in his paper on “Pilot Courts” referred to the deficiency due to which many under-trial prisoners had been languishing in jail for more than a year, without being produced before a judicial magistrate.

He noted, however, that some cases against investigating officers for wrongful confinement had been instituted in the High Courts.

Dealing with delay, he said, some of the laws did provide a time limit for disposal of cases, such as Industrial Relation Ordinance of 1969. It required the labour courts to dispose of case within 14 days and the appeal within a month. He said but research showed that hardly any case was disposed of within 14 days. The normal period of pendency was six months to two years, abnormally three to five years, and exceptionally seven to ten years in the labour courts.

In order to overcome delay he suggested that to seek adjournments the counsel should appear in court directly for the purpose.

He also focused on inadequacy of the courts in terms of source material, rules etc. In this context, he said many courts did not have copy of High Court rules. Tools of work, he emphasized, must be ensured.

Justice Rahman said the money coming in the name of reforming the judiciary must be spent for this purpose, not for any other.

It had become order of the day, he said, that the legislature itself prescribed the time within which cases were to be disposed of. The time limits were usually unrealistic and impossible to observe. These were seldom fixed in consultation with courts. Though they looked attractive, courts always appeared to be in default and answerable, he said adding that such legislative intervention, seemingly arbitrary and impractical, was taking place because the judiciary itself had failed to fix reasonable time required for the disposal of such cases.

Keeping in view the environment in which they were supposed to be working, courts remained unguarded, the legislature remained uniformed and these time limits were ignored by the courts on technical grounds, reflecting great disharmony in the functioning of the organs of the state.

A better practice would be, said Justice Rahman, to announce at the commencement of each judicial year the normal time limits for the disposal of each category of cases and make the judge himself responsible for reporting on the level of his performance. The time limit should be realistically fixed, not in the manner the law-making authority had been doing.

The District and Sessions Judge of District Central, Karachi, Zafar Sherwani, dealing with the backlog, said due to the prevailing situation, people, especially under-trial prisoners, had lost hope and their confidence had eroded in the dispensation of justice.

He said out of the total judicial backlog, criminal cases constituted the major category at 81,069 cases, and criminal appeals were 434. Similarly, there were 18,884 civil suits, 20,334 civil appeals, 459 in civil review and 40,90 family suits.

He said ironically in the year 1999 judicial backlog stood at 97,000, but during the last two years it rose up to 125,897 which clearly indicated that the situation was assuming alarming proportions.

“If the number of pending cases continues to rise, it may be doubled in the near future which would have disastrous consequences,” he remarked.

He urged judges to evolve their own strategies for early disposal of cases instead of pursuing old methods of dispensation of justice to all.

Mr Sherwani, presenting a critical analysis of old cases in Sindh courts, said one such case had been lying idle since 1968 as the victim prisoner had seeking justice for the past 33 years. Similarly, the oldest criminal case pertaining to a murder was yet to be decided after the passage of 28 years. These cases clearly cast aspersions on the reputation of the judiciary which needed drastic steps to be rectified.

Earlier, the address of the team leader of the project, Livingston Armytage, who has moved to Kathmandu due to security reasons, was read out by Huma Chughtai, the deputy team leader. He said the workshop was designed to deal with techniques for “purging” old cases, handling difficult counsel seeking unnecessary adjournments, setting realistic targets for clearing up list of cases, managing new cases efficiently, exploring ways to use costs as an effective deterrent against delay and how to “work smart,” and stay motivated.