ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court has deplored what it called the Sindh High Court’s (SHC) failure to perform its constitutional duty of supervising the subordinate courts, particularly monitoring the process of appointment of paralegal staff.

“The plea of consistency with past practice is of no advantage because irregularities in the appointment process cannot be justified by invoking the neglect by the previous administrations,” observed a three-judge SC bench headed by Justice Umar Ata Bandial.

The observations came recently on a petition filed by Ghulam Sarwar Qureshi through his counsel Khawaja Shamsul Islam, seeking a declaration from the apex court that all appointments made in the Sindh judiciary from 2017 till date were ab initio, mala fide, illegal, unlawful, unconstitutional and null and void having of no legal effect.

Sets up committee to examine material provided by the registrar

The Supreme Court, however, constituted a committee comprising its additional registrar (admin) and assistant registrar (civil-II) and a deputy registrar to be nominated by the SHC to examine the present and other requisite material to be summoned by the committee from the SHC registrar.

The committee will prepare a report of its findings on the fairness and transparency of the appointment process of staff in the district judiciary of Sindh and the types and extent of the departure from requirements of the applicable rules, including the Sindh Judicial Staff Service Rules (SJSSR) 1992.

The committee will examine the number and domiciles of successful candidates who were granted age or domicile relaxation or both and the number and posts of successful candidates who were granted relaxation and exemption from different prescribed requirements and stages of the selection process.

The committee will furnish its report before the Supreme Court by Jan 15 after which the case will be taken up again by the court.

In pursuance of Dec 2, 2021 order of the apex court, SHC Registrar Abdul Razzaq has furnished a report, the cursory look of which suggested that the age and domicile relaxations in many cases were requested by the district and sessions judges without citing any justifying reason, the SC observed.

This happened for the posts of stenographer, computer operator and junior clerk, among others, in several districts. The practice of not giving reasons for seeking relaxation of age or domicile is a direct violation of Rule 14 of the SJSSR which deals with the relaxation of rules stating that any of these rules may, for reasons to be recorded in writing, be relaxed in individual cases if the chief justice is satisfied that strict application of the rules would cause undue hardship to the individual concerned.

Similarly, in the report it was evident that for the post of stenographer skill tests in the form of shorthand and typing tests were conducted by the district selection committees, the SC noted. However, as admitted by the SHC registrar, these tests were not marked in some districts while no record of them exists in any district.

Non-availability of such record across the board prima facie indicated that no reliable skill tests were ever taken notwithstanding that Rule 8 of the SJSSR which required stenographers to possess certain qualifications., the SC noted.

Likewise, in the registrar report, information regarding “District-Wise details of appointments in the District judiciary of Sindh for the period from 2017 to date” has been furnished.

According to the apex court, this data confirms that the process of appointing staff to the district judiciary was replete with irregularities.

Certain anomalies were noticed in the appointments to certain posts, namely junior clerk (BPS-11), bailiff (BPS-5) and CCTV operator (BPS-05) as there was neither any entry test conducted nor any marking scheme prepared for interview. Similarly, for the posts of hardware and networking technician (BPS-14), computer operator (BPS-12) and junior clerk (BPS-11), candidates who had not obtained the threshold pass marks were appointed.

For certain senior posts, namely stenographer (BPS16), computer operator (BPS-12), and junior clerk (BPS-11), no marking scheme in interviews was used to assess performance of the candidates.

For posts like stenographer, junior clerk and bailiff, the marking scheme of interviews was dispensed with. Vacancies for almost all posts in East district of Karachi were not advertised in newspapers.

When the Registrar was confronted with this information, he acknowledged that these lapses were committed by the authorities involved in employing the candidates but no action was taken by the SHC because no complaint had ever been received in this regard.

The registrar, however assured that any directive issued by the Supreme Court would be followed in letter and spirit to prevent such errors from occurring again in the future.

He, along with senior lawyer Munir A. Malik, also said that the procedure adopted by the district and sessions judges of forwarding unreasoned requests to the SHC chief justice for seeking age and domicile relaxations from 2017 and onwards was consistent with the past practice of the high court.

Published in Dawn, January 2nd, 2022