The Parliament requires to pass some law under which the issue of 1.86 million pending cases in different courts of the country could be addressed in the same way as the Lower House went through a legislation to clip the unilateral powers of Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) in initiating suo motu cases.
This was stated by the Minister of State on Law and Justice Shahadat Awan on Thursday at the Lower House of the Parliament. He was responding to a question raised by Nuzhat Pathan regarding the state of pending cases in Supreme Court and high courts of the country in the last five year.
The House was told that a total of 186,1616 cases have remained unaddressed in the last five years in various superior courts in the country.
“It is the complete prerogative of the Supreme Court to resolve the issue as the government has no such legal provision to intervene in this matter,” Awan claimed. He, however, said that the shortage of judges is also one of some reasons for delaying this matter.
“There are several vacant posts of the judges and it was the authority of the SC to fill these posts as per its prescribed procedure and the government has nothing to do with this except only notifying the selected judges against respective judges,” he justified.
As per written reply submitted to the House, there are 380,436 cases of different courts pending in 2022, 389,392 in 2021 followed by 377,900, 365945 and 347,947 in 2019, 2018 and 2017, respectively.
According to the document, a total of 239,595 cases were delayed only in SC in the said time period which included 51,744 cases in 2022, 51,766 in 2021, 46,516 in 2020, 42,582 in 2019 and 40,987 in 2018.
The Lahore High Court has pendency of 739,212 cases that have been unsolved in the past five years. The pendency includes as 179,425 cases in 2022, 187,255 in 2021, 188,176 in 2020, 181,999 in 2019 and 166,157 in 2018.
There are 424,420 non-addressed cases in Sindh High Court including 85,781 in 2022, 84,104 in 2021, 81,684 in 2020, 83,920 in 2019 and 88,931 in 2018. Likewise, the Peshawar High Court has pendency of 19, 3296 cases as 41,911 in 2022, 44,703 in 2021, 41,042 in 2020, 36,711 in 2019 and 28,929 in 2018.
As many as 83,807 cases of different categories could not be resolved by Islamabad High Court in the last five years including 17,104 in 2022, 17,456 in 2020 16,288 in 2020, 15,885 in 2019 and 17,074 in 2018.
The High Court of Balochistan stood with very less number of delayed cases as overall it has only 2, 3486 cases which could not be done in five years including as 4,471 in 2022, 4, 108 in 2021, 4,194 in 2020, 4,848 in 2021 and 5,865 in 2018.
Earlier, the Lower House passed a bill aiming to strike down the powers of CJP in initiating suo motu cases and constituting benches along with a last-minute addition of two amendments, including a controversial one giving right of appeal to aggrieved persons in the already decided cases, with retrospective effect. The bill was passed at a time when a five-judge bench of the apex court was hearing a petition filed by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) against the Election Commission of Pakistan’s act of delaying the polls in Punjab in the alleged violation of the superior court’s decision after the CJP took a suo motu notice of the issue last month.