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Number of cases surged from 884 in 2017 to 2,180 last year, global litigation study finds
ISLAMABAD: The website of the Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan (LJCP), the supreme body that keeps a check on the legal system, didn’t show statistics on the number of cases pending in courts across the country, it emerged on Friday.
The development comes as the judiciary is under criticism for a huge backlog of cases, the number which has surpassed two million in superior and lower courts.
The data on pending cases can normally be accessed through the LJCP’s website. Though it now seemed to have been removed from there.
A a senior LJCP official told Dawn that the removal of the stats had nothing to do with the criticism of judiciary. He said the website was being revamped and the Punjab Information Technology Board had been tasked with upgrading it.
When asked why other data was still on the website except for the details of pending cases, he said it was a technical matter and the information would be updated when the revamp was complete.
Headed by the chief justice of Pakistan, the LJCP is responsible for developing and improving the country’s legal system and recommending reforms in laws and statutes.
Other members of the commission are Federal Shariat Court Chief Justice Iqbal Hameedur Rehman, Sindh High Court Chief Justice Ahmed Ali M. Sheikh, Lahore High Court Chief Justice Muhammad Ameer Bhatti, Balochistan High Court Chief Justice Naeem Akhtar Afghan, Islamabad High Court Chief Justice Aamer Farooq and Peshawar High Court Chief Justice Mohammad Ibrahim Khan.
According to a report, 54,965 cases were pending in the Supreme Court as of June 30. When Justice Bandial took oath as the chief justice in February last year, 53,964 cases were pending in the apex court.
In February this year, the Supreme Court announced that 24,303 cases were decided between Feb 2, 2022, and Feb 25, 2023, against the institution of 22,018 new cases. Therefore, the number of pending cases had dropped by 2,285. i.e. from 54,735 to 52,450, it said.
CJP Bandial is set to retire on Sept 16 and will be replaced by Justice Qazi Faez Isa, currently the most senior judge after the chief justice.
However, at the time of his retirement, the number of cases pending in the apex court would be the highest since its establishment in 1947.
Published in Dawn, July 29th, 2023
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