Story of the Pending Cases
The provincial capital Peshawar takes pride in submitting that it has topped the pendency list with 36,648 cases in the 47 courts of Civil and Session Judges. Each judge has a heavy burden of 779 cases of civil and criminal nature. Nowshera district has grabbed the overall second position in this competition and has 14,407 pending cases with each judge having 758 cases.
The official data has revealed that 506 courts of Civil, Additional, and Session Judges are functional in the 35 districts of the province. Around 86,756 criminal and 15,5963 civil nature cases are pending in lower courts. The following is a postmortem of each district which has contributed in this competition and made the judiciary proud.
District Peshawar has 47 courts of Civil and Session Judges while 36,648 cases are pending in these courts.
The home district of Law Minster Fazal Shakoor (Charsaddah) has 20 courts with11,047 cases still waiting for the final blow.
District Mardan has 35 courts and 24,402 cases. Sawabi has 13092 cases, 24 judges,
Malakand has 3,397 cases, 11 judges. Swat has 14,016 cases ,34 courts. Shangla 1,728 cases eight judges are working.
The NA -7 star Bashir khan's District (Lower dir) has 17 courts and 5235 cases are pending and 11 courts in Upper Dir with 3,843 cases still pending.
There are 12 courts and 3,436 cases in the Buner district and eight courts with 2,669 cases are pending in Chitral.
DI Khan,the home town of Kashmir affairs minister Ali Amin Gandapur has 26 judges and 16,445 cases.
Tank has eight judges and 1,822 cases.
Bannu has 22, judges with a burden of 8231 cases.
Lakki Marwat has 12, judges and 6,344 cases.
Kohat has 20 judges, 9,771 cases.
Hangu seven judges, 1,895 cases.
Karak 14 judges, 7,900 cases,
Haripur 25 judges, 13,248 cases,
Abbottabad 28 judges while 17,873 cases are pending.
District Mansehra has 14,026 cases, 26 courts,
Batagram, 1,071 cases, nine judges,
Kohistan Upper 310 cases, nine judges,
Torghar 237 cases, and five judges to deal with these cases.
District Bajaur seven judges and 1,592 cases pending.
District Khyber eight judges,3,057 cases,
Mohmand six judges,961 cases
Orakzai seven judges,389 cases,
Khurram six judges, 1,484 cases
North Waziristan five judges, 777 cases,
South Waziristan six judges, 462 cases.
Following are some of the reasons due to which these much number of cases are pending
The judiciary of Khyber Pakhtunkhuwa has 596 posts of judges but 470 are working while 126 posts are vacant.
The Peshawar High Court has 20 judges but 14 are working and six are vacant.
Similarly, the posts of 29 Additional District and Sessions Judges are vacant. Out of a total of 159, only 130 judges are working. However, there are 97 vacancies for civil judges, judicial magistrates and family judges. As many as 224 judges are working on 338 posts.
Judges will have to discourage adjournment for speedy decisions of cases as well as dismiss frivolous cases. Here a statement of Justice (retd) kazim Ali Malik comes to my mind when he was giving interview to a social media outlet, where he said that once the trial commence, the courts will be adjourned only on three occasions:"On the date fixed, the judge dies or on the date fixed the lawyer dies or on the date fixed the accused dies."
All the vacant positions should be filled soon so that the burden on the existing judges will be decreased and it can enable speedy justice.
