ISLAMABAD – The Supreme Court’s hearing on high profile cases involving unconstitutional steps, breach of human rights, corruption, mismanagement and violation of rules by the executive authorities is adding to the suffering of common litigants, as their cases are facing delays due to the high-profile lengthy litigations. Legal experts said although almost all benches of the Supreme Court heard such matters after routine timings, even then these matters caused delay in adjudication of common men’s litigations. Owing to hearing of constitutional disputes which arise due to ill advices by the government’s legal team to the executive authorities, the larger and special benches of the court have to consume days, weeks and months to decide such a case.
Similarly, matters involving corruption, mismanagement and breach of human rights also take months to get decided. In its various observations and verdicts, the court has expressed concern that laws and rules were ignored by the executive authorities while taking important decisions that were ill advised. In a recent verdict on the appointment of Justice (r) Deedar Hussain Shah as the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) chairman, the court observed that the matter was handled by the Law ministry in a manner depicting shallow and perfunctory understanding of the constitution and the relevant law. According to senior lawyers, such lengthy cases were multiplying the delays and adding to the miseries of the poor. Presently, they said the court was engaged in dozens of such cases, which would take months and years to get decided.
They said the government’s delaying tactics in the implementation of court decisions were also prolonging the cases already disposed of. They said the court should first make the backlog of routine cases zero so that the sufferings of common litigants could be narrowed and then adjudicate upon the high profile matters. At present, the court is hearing high profile cases that including corruption and mismanagement in haj affairs, cases of senior civil servants rehired on contract basis after their superannuation, the Bank of Punjab loans scam, corruption in the Pakistan Steel Mills, billions of rupees of corruption in procurement of land by National Insurance Company (NICL), smuggling through ISAF containers, illegal writing-off of over Rs 256 billion loans, PCO judges and review plea against the NRO verdict.
