Recently the Chief Justice of Pakistan said that the people of Pakistan were not getting justice because the government organisations were not following the court orders. He also said that he was working to fix the justice system so that every Pakistani could get easy and quick justice.
The Chief Justice has good sentiments but like his predecessors, he too will fail in his quest of improving the justice system of Pakistan because he has also failed to realise the main root cause of delayed justice in Pakistan. The real reason for failure of judicial system in Pakistan is the failure and duplicity of higher courts judges.
The High Courts and Supreme Court judges have more power over the lower court judges. And if we observe the history, we will notice that in many cases the lower court had awarded the correct justice but the higher court judge intervenes, reverts the lower court orders and then delays the case through a long “stay order”.
Take the example of the first privatisation sale of Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) which was sold at a good rate to a professional steel making company, but the local workers mafia of PSM went to courts against this sale. The lower court rejected their illogical case but the Sindh High Court in record two-day hearing reverted a multi-million privatisation of PSM. The result is that the PSM has caused an annual loss of more than 500 million rupees to the government of Pakistan since 2008.
I also observed a similar example when SNGPL MD took action against a Peshawar lower court stay order. The SNGPL personnel admitted to breaking the stay order, thus admitting their guilt. But the judge, instead of punishing them, delayed the case and asked the applicant to take back their contempt of court application. Even the SNGPL MD boasted to me that he was not afraid of court orders, claiming he got hundreds of court orders every month but never followed them.
On asking my lawyer, I was informed that a Peshawar lower court judge issued an arrest warrant against a police personnel once. The next day, the judge was shifted to some far off area while the arrest warrant was quashed. This way a message has been given to all lower court judges not to take action against any government official while the High Court judges are all involved in delaying justice by awarding illogical and unnecessary long stay orders.
Even now many corrupt and criminals are sitting comfortably in government jobs and even in Parliament on extended stay orders of High Courts and Supreme Court. If these judges were genuinely working to provide justice, they would have realised that giving such long stay orders, in this era of fast communication and transport technologies, is not only wrong but also illogical.
ENGR SHAHRYAR KHAN BASEER
Peshawar
