The performance and working of the judiciary came under scrutiny of the National Assembly for the second consecutive day when the house was informed that over 380,000 cases were pending before the Supreme Court and all the five high courts of the country.
During the alternate private member’s day, the lawmakers also protested over the government’s move to withdraw subsidy on power tariff for the textile industry as per conditions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
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Both the issues came up under discussion during the Question Hour and lawmakers, who had lashed out at the judiciary during the sitting on Monday at the time of the passage of the controversial bill clipping the suo motu power of the chief justice of Pakistan (CJP), once again consumed significant time on discussing reasons for the huge backlog of cases in the country, causing problems to litigants and the masses.
One of the reasons for this heavy backlog, according to Minister of State for Law and Justice Shahadat Awan, is the inaction on the part of the judiciary to fill vacant posts in all courts.
Presenting the data in response to a question asked by a Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) dissident Nuzhat Pathan, the minister told the assembly that a total of 380,436 cases had been pending in the higher courts till Dec 31, 2022, whereas 38 posts of judges were at present lying vacant.
Providing a break-up, the minister told the lower house of the parliament that a total of 51,744 cases had been pending before the SC where three posts of judges had been lying vacant for a long time. Similarly, the data shows that 179,425 cases were pending before the Lahore High Court, where a total of 19 posts of judges are lying vacant against the sanctioned strength of 60.
As many as 85,781 cases were pending before the Sindh High Court which is also facing a shortage of 11 judges.
The number of pending cases before the Peshawar High Court stands at 41,911 whereas Balochistan High Court and Islamabad High Court have backlogs of 4,198 and 17,104 cases, respectively.
