‘Judiciary is no longer a men-only club’

Lahore High Court Chief Justice Azmat Saeed has said there is no gender discrimination in the judicial service and only merit reigns supreme.
“Judiciary or lawyers’ profession is no more a men’s club. Women judges can deliver more if they were equipped with proper training of mind and clarity of basic concepts coupled with interactive exposure,” he said.
The chief justice was talking to a delegation of faculty members and male and female students of the Hamayat-e-Islam Law College here on Thursday at LHC.
In a judicial chitchat with the law students, the CJ encouraged the females students by elaborating that there were more scope for them in future as compared to their male colleagues because they were more focused.
“There is urgent need of judges as case ratio per judge is 979 in the Punjab as compared to 235 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 242 in Sindh. We are going to double the strength of judicial officers in 3 to 5 years in phases. It will not be possible over night because required infrastructure is also necessary for setting up courts,” the CJ said.
The CJ also said advocate community in Punjab was neither overcrowded nor saturated stage and there is a room for hardworking and talented people. “There are 75,000 advocates in the Punjab but still there is great scope for competent ones,” he said. He said profession of law was a full time job that spanned over at least 12 hours a day and was not a forced labour but was an interesting, enjoyable and innovative field.
He said a surgeon avoided operating on his near and dear ones however, there was a code of conduct and established ethics for this profession so the lawyers should perform their professional obligations on the basis of facts of the case and not personal relationship with the client. He advised the students not to opt for this profession for powers or mere money-making. Rather they should always endeavour for upholding the principles of law and fair play. He said that problems of 21st century could not be handled with the system and process available in the 19th century so the NTS had been inducted to conduct tests on judges.