PESHAWAR, Nov 8: Peshawar High Court Chief Justice Dost Mohammad Khan on Thursday said the country faced many challenges but the positive thing about the current times was the change in the mindset of the people as unlike the past when the civil society and some political parties asked the generals to intervene, they currently approached the judiciary for measures to address their grievances.

“We believe in strong and continuous democratic process but at the same time, we will maintain check and balance for the government so that it doesn’t violate the law and Constitution,” the chief justice said here at the concluding ceremony of the weeklong training course on judgment writing for civil judges-cum-judicial magistrates here.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Judicial Academy had organised the function in collaboration with United Nations Development Programme.

The chief justice said the country was confronted with many challenges, including poor administration, bad governance, corruption and nepotism, while the people at large felt frustrated under the current circumstances.

He said it was a very encouraging sign that events of the past few years had inculcated in the mind of the civil society to approach an entirely different and constitutional forum  for redressing their grievances and to correct the wrong or injustices done to them.The chief justice said with the grace of Almighty Allah and support of civil society and media, judiciary had delivered its best without any pick and choose and those who used to claim to be untouchable were asked about their actions.

He said sometimes, certain people insisted judges were getting themselves involved in politics because they made observations during hearing into the cases, which were not in their domain.

“In my humble view, such people are totally wrong. If something is going wrong causing immense injustice and frustration to a segment of the society, we make certain observations not to humiliate anyone but to give out a message to the wrongdoers to refrain from such practices,” he said.

He said the judiciary exercised the maximum possible restraint while passing judicial orders and made reformatory observations for the people on the wrong side of the law.

Justice Dost Mohammad said the judiciary was striving for establishing the rule of law as it was the last chance with it to save the system. “If we miss this opportunity, God forbid we will be losing whole system and the country itself,” he said.He also underscored the importance of judgment writing, saying the judgments of the courts should encompass all controversial and important issues in the case and law points and if that happened, then it would be hard for appellate courts to set aside the judgments and even up to the Supreme Court, their judgments would not be rejected.

Director general of KP Judicial Academy Hayat Ali Shah said in less than three months since the academy had begun operations, three batches of judges, including 75 judicial officers, had completed training of judgment writing.

He said while arranging training they had kept in mind the saying of the chief justice that peace could only be ensured through rule of law; rule of law can only be ensured through proper dispensation of justice; and for dispensation of justice an efficient judiciary was required.

He expressed the hope that the trainees would transform what ever they had learnt in the training in their daily work.

Mr Shah said after indulging in these training many more avenues had opened on them and now they had realised that the judicial officers needed training in almost all the segments attached to their official work including judgment writing, recording of evidence, appreciation of evidence and law, etc. He added that while they were imparting training regarding Nizam-i-Adl Regulation in Malakand the judicial officer expressed the desire that they may also be trained in Shariah laws as in Malakand they had to interpret laws in accordance with Shariah but they were trained in Anglo-Saxon laws.

Earlier, a representative of the trainees, Aalia Ahsan Swathi, said she felt proud that a seat of learning like Judicial Academy existed in the province that helped improve the quality of justice.