SUKKUR, May 24 Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry has blamed 'delay in justice' for the situation in Swat and Malakand and called for changes in relevant laws to provide speedy justice to people.

Addressing a dinner hosted in his honour by the Sukkur chapter of the Sindh High Court Bar Association after administering oath to newly-elected office-bearers of the bar, the CJP asked lawyers to cleanse their community of black sheep and urged them to help the judiciary in implementing the new judicial policy, which was aimed at quick disposal of cases and providing litigants justice at grass roots level.

He said he expected the government to give the judiciary required help in achieving the objective as the judiciary was the third pillar of the state.

Former presidents of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan and Hamid Khan, president of HCBA Sukkur Bhajan Das Tejvani, and general secretary Qurban Malano also addressed the oath-taking ceremony.

The CJP said that the judicial policy had almost been finalised and its format had been sent to all relevant quarters. A plan would soon be sent to the government to put it into practice, he said.

He said that the government was cooperating with the judiciary, which was evident from the appointment of judges in the superior courts.

“We want to provide cheap and quick justice to people at their doorsteps by doing away with lethargic and (unbearably) long legal process, in which murder cases are often tried for decades and even challans are not submitted for months altogether,” he observed.

He said that decision on bail application should come within seven days and cases' decision should take six months but it was up to the lawyers to undo their old practices and ensure quick decisions.

He deplored that the prisoners were living in subhuman conditions, which was a stark violation of Islamic principles.

Referring to the troubled areas of Swat and Malakand, he said that lawyers of these areas had also been affected, judges had been besieged in their homes and courts had become non-functional.

He urged lawyers of the high court bar to come to the rescue of their colleagues of Swat and Malakand, who had reportedly migrated to Peshawar and Mardan and were now out of their jobs.

He said that he was going to Peshawar on June 13 to meet the affected lawyers. He was told by chief justice of Peshawar high court that these lawyers were attending local courts but they did not have clientele, he said.

Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan praised lawyers of Sukkur for their prominent role in the movement and said that the movement gathered momentum from Sukkur when the CJP Iftikhar Chaudhry accepted invitation of late Imdad Awan to address high court bar on April 14, 2008.

He condemned Taliban for destroying schools in Swat and Malakand and said that they made inroad in the area because they decided cases speedily wile sitting under the trees in Waziristan and Swat, which won them people's hearts.

He said that people of Pakistan had faced crisis over the past 60 years due to delayed justice. Before people got disappointed in the system and new Swats started popping up in this country, “we should work for quick and speedy justice for our people”.

Swat represented a symptom of a disease, which maligned the whole society and similar reaction could emerge anytime anywhere, he said. “To save the country from a revolution, we will have to bring revolutionary reforms,” he added.