In a bid to reduce the pendency of cases in the country’s top court, Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Qazi Faez Isa has called for ending the practice of seeking adjournments.
During a hearing of an agreement violation case on Monday, the CJP remarked: “Get this out of [your] mind that adjournments will be granted [in cases] from now on.”
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CJP Isa said that the practice of granting adjournments in the cases should now be considered a thing of the past.
He said there are a lot of pending cases in the Supreme Court and added that in any case, a notice will be issued to the parties on a single hearing and a decision will be taken on the arguments in the next hearing.
CJP Isa maintained that through this case he was sending a message to everyone that adjournment in cases will not be granted anymore.
The top judge said time is given in other courts for the submission of documents related to cases but the Supreme Court is the last court of resort where records of all cases were submitted beforehand.
Justice Isa who took the oath as the Chief Justice of Pakistan on September 17, 2023, had pledged that during the hearing of a first case as the country’s top judge all-out efforts would be made to dispose of the pending cases at the earliest.
Former CJP Justice Umar Ata Bandial had blamed constitutional cases for the increase in cases backlog in the country’s top court.
Highlighting the performance of the court after he assumed charge, the former CJP had said the apex court disposed of some 23,000 cases last year, breaking the record of 18,000 cases in one year.
The Supreme Court decided 24,303 cases during the period from last year — February 2, 2022, to February 25, 2023 — against the total institution of 22,018 new cases during the same period.
The pendency/backlog of cases in the Supreme Court of Pakistan was reduced by 2,285 cases from 54,735 to 52,450 during the aforementioned period.
The number of cases decided in the annual period ending February 2023 was the highest since 2018 when the total disposal was 16,961 cases.
