District Complaint Cells established to clear backlog of cases from courts
Thereby, session courts have been restricted from hearing petitions before filing of cases.
ISLAMABAD (Dunya News) – A long-awaited issue of litigants have been resolved with the facility of District Complaint Cells following Monday’s meeting of the Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Asif Saeed Khosa, who announced the establishment of model courts at district level throughout the country for conducting the trials on daily basis so that speedy justice to the public could be ensured and the massive backlog of cases could be reduced.
Thereby, session courts have been restricted from hearing petitions before filing of cases.
Under new rules, a litigant will be required to appear before ‘District Complaint Cell’ that will be headed by the Investigations SP of each district shall act as the focal person for the police at the district level and shall liaise with the process cell.
Besides, more than 25,000 applications filed in district and session courts of Lahore have been transferred to the District Complaint Cell while the courts have been restricted to proceed under Section 22 A/22 B of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC).
These changes have been observed following the meeting of the National Judicial (Policy Making) Committee (NJPMC) at the Supreme Court building. The committee was presided over by the chief justice and attended by chief justices of the Federal Shariat Court and high courts. CJP Khosa had explained that Article 37 (d) of the Constitution requires the state to provide expeditious and inexpensive justice thus under the light of this principle model trial courts will be established in the country to carry out trials daily.
NJPMC Secretary Dr Mohammad Raheem Awan briefed the meeting that from Jan 1, 2017 to Feb 28, 2019, a total number of 614,307 cases under section 22 A/22 B CrPC were filed in the district judiciary throughout the country. During the same time period 47,029 cases under similar provisions were filed in the high courts.
The NJPMC secretary further briefed the committee that during 2019 till date, a total of 25,426 complaints have been disposed of by complaint redressal centres.
The attendance of witnesses would be ensured through special process servers.
The investigations in-charge of each police station shall be responsible for the production of all witnesses (except medical witnesses) and case property.
For the timely production of medical witnesses, the respective health secretaries would be approached.
Furthermore, it was informed that a monitoring and evaluation cell under the supervision of the chief justice of Pakistan to oversee the execution of the initiative would be set-up. He further stated that the progress of the said initiative would be reviewed after every two months.
