PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa cabinet will examine a bill for the withdrawal of the last year’s ‘controversial’ amendments to the Code of Civil Procedure on tomorrow (Thursday), the Peshawar High Court was told on Tuesday.

Also in the day, the provincial bar council extended the strike of lawyers against the CCP amendments until Nov 7 (Saturday).

Advocate general Shumail Ahmad Butt and law secretary Masood Ahmad told a high court bench consisting of Justice Qaiser Rashid Khan and Justice Lal Jan Khattak that the representative committees of lawyers and the government had developed consensus on a proposed bill for CCP amendments.

They said the Code of Civil Procedure (Amendment) Bill, 2020, would be tabled in the assembly after the cabinet’s approval.

Bar council extends strike until Saturday

The bench was hearing a petition filed by KP Bar Council Vice-Chairman Shahid Raza Malik requesting the court to declare unconstitutional and against the principal of natural justice the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Code of Civil Procedure (Amendment) Act, 2019, through which drastic changes were made to the civil law last year.

The bench decided to take up the petition on the Nov 5 afternoon after the cabinet’s meeting.

After the court adjourned the hearing, the KPBC also announced it had extended the lawyers’ strike, which began on Oct 17, until Nov 7.

Besides Shahid Raza and KPBC executive committee chairman Shahid Qayyum Khattak, senior lawyers Mohammad Faheem Wali, Khalilullah Khalil, Hazrat Rehman Khan, Shahid Qayyum Khattak, Maulana Shamsul Haq and others also appeared before the bench.

Justice Qaiser Rashid Khan observed that the people had been suffering from the lawyers’ strike as thousands of cases were adjourned without any progress.

He observed that the representatives of lawyers should realise the misery of litigants and end their strike.

Shahid Raza said early this year, the lawyers had started a strike on the issue and called it off after the government promised to reverse the CCP changes.

He, however, said the government didn’t fulfil the promise and the controversial changes remained part of the civil law.

The respondents in the petition are the provincial government through chief secretary, secretaries of establishment and law departments, principal secretary to the chief minister, and secretary of the KP Assembly.

The petitioner said Section 26-C of the law, which dealt with the ‘framing of issues, filing of list of witnesses and recording of evidence’, was absolutely unreasonable, illogical and against basic principle of justice.

He contended that Section 26-C prescribed the mode of recording evidence by a commission, which was in derogation of and in conflict with the basic principles of law.

The petitioner said instead of the filing of an appeal against a civil judge’s judgment before the district judge following the last year’s amendment, the appeal had to be filed with the high court.

Meanwhile, the strike by lawyers continued on Tuesday with most of them staying away from courts, including the high court.

The KPBC asked the bar associations to hold meetings and peaceful rallies against the CCP amendments and pass resolutions and forward proposals to the KPBC.

It also warned that if any lawyer was found to be violating the strike decision, he or she would be dealt with strictly.

The initial strike decision was taken by the KPBC on Oct 16.

Earlier this year, the bar council had observed a strike for 23 days against the CCP amendments and called it off on Jan 30.

Published in Dawn, November 4th, 2020