PESHAWAR: Peshawar High Court here on Wednesday launched ‘auto case fixation system’ (ACFS) to ensure a more transparent, efficient and streamlined process for scheduling cases, significantly reducing human intervention and manual effort.
The system was inaugurated by PHC Chief Justice SM Atique Shah.
According to the additional registrar (judicial), Hidayatullah Khan, the project was developed under the supervision of Justice Waqar Ahmad and Justice Faheem Wali, with the active collaboration of PHC’s IT team and judicial branch, to fully automate the case-listing process.
He said that the new system would automatically assign hearing dates on the basis of case seniority, serial number and urgency and no case would remain undated.
Under the new mechanism, each bench will hear 50 cases daily from Monday to Thursday, comprising 20 motion cases and 30 notice cases. On Fridays, division benches will hear 40 cases, while single benches will take up 30 cases each.
According to the system, no bench will exceed its daily capacity and if a bench is full, the case will move to next eligible day.
Hidayatullah Khan said that cases related to subordinate judiciary, election petitions and larger benches besides bar council appeals have been exempted from the automated system and will continue to be fixed under the existing procedure.
He termed it the first-ever automated case fixation system in the judicial history of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He said that the initiative was expected to improve transparency, uniformity and efficiency in case management and judicial proceedings. The system is designed to reduce delay, inconsistency and subjectivity in fixation.
On Monday and Friday, nine single-member benches and a division bench will function, whereas from Tuesday to Thursday four division benches and three single-member benches will perform duties.
ACFS provides that court readers should update case proceedings/disposal/date by court within 24 hours, whereas pending cases can receive next date automatically after 48 hours.
It provides where comments are required within a fortnight, the next date should normally be fixed after at least 30 days unless fixed by the court.
Published in Dawn, July 2nd, 2026