PESHAWAR, Oct 6: Peshawar High Court senior puisne judge Miftauddin Khan on Saturday urged members of subordinate judiciary to be fair and impartial in their conduct, saying peace and prosperity in the society is dependent on how they discharge duty. He was the chief guest at the concluding ceremony of a weeklong training workshop on ‘judgment writing’ here.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Judicial Academy in collaboration with United Nations Development Programme organised the workshop for civil judges-cum-judicial magistrates.

Justice Miftauddin, who is also vice chairman of the academy’s board of governors, underscored the importance of judgment writing and said a good judgment depicted personality of the relevant judge(s).

He said judgment writing was a skill, which could be secured by exercise.

“A good judgment minimises not only agony of litigants but also helps reduce the judiciary’s workload,” he said.

The judge asked members of judiciary to be cautious while delivering judgments, saying they are protectors of the people’s rights.

He said judges spoke through their judgments and that a judgment was manifestation of the personality of a judge.

Justice Miftauddin said judges had been assigned sacred duty of provision of justice to the citizens and they were the face of the judiciary. He said that their job was not an easy one and there were several hurdles on their way.

Another senior PHC judge, Mian Fasihul Mulk, told participants that judicial officers needed training as the role of judiciary had increased a great deal in different fields, especially good governance, in recent years.

He said on global level, efficiency in the rule of law was considered catalyst in social and economic development.

Justice Mulk praised the role of the judicial academy, saying it was unique in the country for imparting training to all stakeholders of criminal justice system, including prosecutors, police investigators, lawyers and probation officers.

Director general of the academy Hayat Ali Shah said the academy would organise courses in Islamic Shariah as around 40 per cent of the judges of lower courts had been performing duty in areas, where people expected that judges would deliver judgments in line with Shariah.

He said the academy had been planning to design a course on Shariah keeping in view the aspirations of the people of Malakand division so that in future judiciary should not be blamed for crisis.

Mr Hayat said it was a misconception that the reason behind the previous crisis in Malakand division was judicial system as there were several other actors involved in it but they tried to place the entire blame on judiciary.

He said designing training workshops for judges was difficult as they had different temperament compared to officers of other departments.

Civil judge Aurangzeb Khan, who was also in attendance, said the training workshop was of great importance for judges as it would help them know better ways of writing judgments.

Administration officer Asghar Ali, moderator of the event, said the current was the second training workshop organised for judges since the academy began functioning in July this year.