The Ministry of Law and Justice has said that it has no access to records of pending cases in high courts of the country since January 2018, according to a local media report.
According to the report, the ministry, in its reply to a query in Senate, said that it doesn’t have access to the latest statistics regarding pending cases in high courts and it has approached the Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan (LJCP) and the high courts in this regard.
The ministry stated that according to the available data, at least 36,921 cases were currently pending in the Peshawar High Court (PHC) in accordance with record till August 2018 while 88,931 cases in the Sindh High Court (SHC) till January 2019.
It had emerged on February 6 – 2019 that 6,407 cases had been filed in the Supreme Court between Jan 1 – 2018 and Dec 31 – 2018. Of them, 6,342 cases were settled and subsequently disposed off.
The full court meeting had been chaired by the Chief Justice of Pakistan Asif Saeed Khosa with all judges of the apex court in attendance noticed that currently 40,535 cases were pending in the apex court. The meeting expressed satisfaction on the ratio of settled and pending cases.
In December last year, Minister for Law and Justice had told the Senate that 350,447 cases were pending with the Supreme Court and five high courts.
The minister, while providing statistics to the Upper House, had said that as on October 15 this year, 39,742 cases were pending with the Supreme Court, 16,580 cases with the Lahore High Court, 91,548 cases with the Sindh High Court, 29,449 cases with the Peshawar High Court, 6,852 cases with the Balochistan High Court and 17,056 cases with the Islamabad High Court.
