LAHORE - The Lahore High Court is going to introduce a new IT system which will enable litigants to file online petitions and monitor them at subsequent stages.
The new system, Enterprise Technology, costing Rs 250 million, will be established at LHC within nine months, said LHC senior puisne judge, Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, at the auditorium of the Lahore Tax Bar yesterday. The judge said Enterprise Technology system would be a revolutionary step in improving the judicial system of the country as it would replace the manual system of filing writs with online system.
Justice Abid Aziz Sheikh, Justice Shams Mahmood Mirza, Justice Shahid Jameel Khan, Justice Shahid Karim, senior lawyers and members of the tax bar were also present there.
Justice Shah said the new Enterprise Technology system would be helpful for timely disposal of cases. Judges, lawyers and litigants would be able to know about their cases through the latest system of information technology. He said more than 8,500 cases related to the tax matters were lying pending in different courts. He stated all cases pending before regional benches could be disposed of timely if these were fixed before the LHC principal seat. Justice Shah said the tax cases of the same nature would also be clubbed together with the help of the Lahore Tax Bar Association. He urged the tax bar to establish its own website, saying it would be helpful for lawyers in finding references. He asked the lawyers to prepare well with the knowledge of tax laws, so that quality of judgments could be delivered on the tax matters.
On January 29, Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah held a meeting with multi-national IT companies’ CEOs and IT experts and received briefing about IT system and flow of cases. In all of his addresses, he had pointed out this new project by urging all stakeholders of the judiciary to work together to make this new IT system successful.
The current IT system is not working properly as the lawyers do not get timely information abut their cases fixed before different benches. Interestingly, on July 12 last year, rats gnawed networking wires of copy branch the LHC. The lawyers and litigants suffered a lot of problems in getting copies of their cases. IT officials restored the networking of the branch soon. However, he lawyers demanded the authorities to upgrade the system at least out of the reach of rats.
The Lahore High Court spokesman said this new IT system would be introduced at seven courts of the LHC. He further said tax matters would also be computerised.