LAHORE: In order to deal with more than 10,000 pending cases in various courts the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) has appointed 19 new legal advisors, Pakistan Today learnt on Monday.
According to the details, Chaudhry Waseem A Bhaddar will represent the authority before the Supreme Court (SC) whereas four legal advisors including Sahabzada Muzaffar Ali, Syed Moazzam Ali Shah, Syed Mehdi Ali Bukhari and Amir Adrees Awan will see the cases which are under trial in the high court.
Similarly, a team of 14 legal advisors including Muhammad Asif, Muhammad Majid, Hussain Ibrahim, Ahmad Ali Ranj, Zeeshan Ali Khursheed, Saqib Mubarak Bhatti, Saif Ullah Maan, Syed Imtiaz Hussain Shah, Muhammad Khawar Kalim, Sardar Muhammad Waris, Usman Siddiqui, Irum Masud Chughtai and Muzammil Madni will deal with the pending cases in civil courts.
A well-informed source in LDA informed Pakistan Today that the authority is remains embroiled in thousands of cases whereas the authorities previously hired lawyers did not perform well. “LDA has more than 10,000 pending cases in different courts. Previously a team of 18 legal advisors was assigned to deal with them. However, they were breaking free bread as the number of cases against LDA kept increasing while the previous were not being wrapped up either”.
“The previous team of legal advisors was also highly paid. All senior lawyers fighting in the high courts were charging Rs9000 rupees for each case. Additionally, they were also being given a retainer-ship allowance of Rs80,000 per month. Similarly, lawyers dealing with cases in lower courts were drawing a salary of Rs35,000 per month while the cases under them showed the bare minimum or no progress at all,” the source added.
“In June this year, the authority sacked the whole legal team and circulated new standard of procedure (SoP) by dividing all pending cases into three categories. Cases which are either pending in the high court or directly involve and interest the authority were kept in A category. B category cases were those in which the authority’s interest was not directly involved and the C category includes cases associated to legal heirs’ cases along with cases wherein LDA was just a Pro Forma defendant”, sources informed.
Sources claimed that resolving the cases would be an uphill task for the new team as pending cases require a lot of time and work.
“The newly appointed team has met with me and the members of LDA’s governing body. All appointments were made on merit. We had advertised the positions in newspapers. There was no political pressure of reference behind these appointments,” LDA DG Usman Moazzam said.
