HYDERABAD: Justice Amir Hani Muslim of Supreme Court has said that the real problem is that people want 17 judges of Supreme Court to take care of the entire country which is impossible.

If all institutions started performing their duty honestly then most problems would be settled at lower level but on the contrary, even issues of minor nature reached the apex court for settlement, he said.

The justice was speaking at a farewell dinner hosted in his honour by the High Court Bar Association (HCBA) on Saturday night.

He said that in the United States, the supreme court judges heard only 15 to 20 cases in a year while in Pakistan the apex court had to handle 100 cases in a day.

About his rise to the post of Supreme Court judge, the justice said that his parents wanted him to be a doctor but when he joined student politics his brother advised him to become a lawyer.

He said that no one else in his family had joined this profession. It was difficult to be a judge and he had often passed sleepless nights filled with fear if he gave a wrong judgment he would have to answer for it to God, he said.

He paid tribute to Justice Kalhoro for working energetically and devotedly as head of a commission over drinking ware issue of Sindh.

He said that Sindh government had complied with apex court’s directives and also formed a task force over the issue of provision of clean drinking water to people.

He said that he had made sincere efforts in 2004 to get revenue record of Sindh computerised but it had not yet been done although Punjab had completed the entire exercise.

The revenue department had not even been able up till this day to reconstruct the record which was burnt down by angry mobs in the wake of assassination of at Benazir Bhutto in 2007, he said.

SHC chief Justice Ahmed Ali Sheikh and HCBA president Ayaz Tunio also spoke on the occasion.

Outgoing CJP Anwar Zaheer Jamali, apex court judges Justice Faisal Arab, Justice Sajjad Ali Shah and others were present at the gathering.

Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2017