Recently the Chief Justice of Pakistan said that the people of Pakistan were not getting Justice because the Government organizations were not following the Court orders. He also said that he is working to fix the justice system so that every Pakistani can get easy and quick justice.
The Chief Justice has good sentiments, but like his predecessors, he too will fail in his quest of improving the Justice system of Pakistan, because he has also failed to realize the main root cause of delayed justice in Pakistan. The real reason for failure of judicial system in Pakistan is the failure and duplicity of higher court judges.
The high court and Supreme court Judges have more power over the lower court judges. And if we observe the history, we will notice that in many cases the lower court had awarded the correct justice, but the higher court judge intervenes, reverts the lower court orders and than delays the case through a long “Stay order”.
Take the example of the first privatization sale of Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM), which was sold at good rate to a professional steel making company, but the local workers mafia of PSM went to courts against this sale. The lower court rejected their illogical case, but the Sindh higher court, in record two day hearing, reverted a milti-million privatization of PSM. The result is that PSM caused an annual loss of +500 million rupees to the Government of Pakistan since 2008.
I also observed a similar example when SNGPL MD took action against a Peshawar lower court stay order. The SNGPL personnel admitted to breaking the stay order, thus admitting their guilt. But the judge instead of punishing them, delayed the case and asked the applicant to take back their “contempt of court” application. Even the SNGPL MD boasted to me that he was not afraid of court orders and he gets hundreds of court orders every month but never follows them.
On asking my lawyer, I was informed that a Peshawar lower court judge issued an arrest warrant against police personnel once. The next day, the Judge was shifted to some far off area, while the arrest warrant was quashed. This way a message has been given to all lower court judges, not to take action against any government official, while the high court judges are all involved in delaying Justice by awarding illogical and unnecessary long “stay orders”.
Even now many corrupt and criminals are sitting in Government jobs and even in Parliament on extended stay orders of High court and Supreme Court judges. If these Judges were genuinely working to provide justice, they would have realized that giving such long stay orders, at time of fast communication and transport technologies, is not only wrong but also illogical.
ENGR. SHAHRYAR KHAN BASEER,
Peshawar, November 12.