Daily Times

This promises to be quite a sight, at least initially, to see a lawyer arguing his case standing in a courtroom in Karachi before a bench sitting in Islamabad. This is happening in the wake of a landmark order by the Supreme Court of Pakistan to launch the e-court system from the next week under which the Supreme Court registries across Pakistan will be connected through the latest technology to its principal seat in Islamabad. The measure is, of course, a step towards reducing the time and expense required for the disposal of cases. The system will bring down the number and length of adjournments. The development must be greatly welcome to litigants who have been required in the past to foot the cost of their lawyers’ travel to Islamabad from Karachi or Quetta and make the lodging arrangements besides paying their fees. The system will enable the judges to hear cases at various registries without having to leave the principal seat. In the pilot phase the principal seat in Islamabad is being linked with the Supreme Court Branch Registry of Karachi. The first such hearing will be by a three-member bench headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Asif Saeed Khosa on May 27.

The video-link connectivity aims at efficient, quick and low-cost disposal of cases. This is just one addition to the chief justice’s plan to reduce the backlog of cases in courts. An amendment is in the works regarding the setting up of Lahore High Court’s benches at divisional headquarters in the Punjab. The initiation of model courts earlier this month, which the chief justice described as a silent revolution in judicial history, has started producing desirable results in a matter of weeks. Model courts take up the pending cases and conclude hearings within days. The statistics speak volumes for their performance: 1,577 murder cases and 2,496 narcotics-related cases were decided by May 20. Some lawyers had initially opposed the model courts, but the courts have taken a firm stand in this regard.

These are reforms the bench has delivered. They can only succeed once the bar is on the same page. Unfortunately, the bar and the bench have yet to set an example of working in tandem to make our judicial system exemplary. The Punjab Bar Council has called a strike in protest at an anti-terrorism court’s verdict penalizing a lawyer for attacking a judge. The convict had injured a civil judge in Jaranwala. The lawyers reportedly greeted the verdict with kicking the courtroom door before locking it from outside. Such conduct is hard to imagine in a civilized world. The best course for the convict and his supporters is to appeal the sentence. *