Islamabad:
A new Legal and Administrative Front has emerged in the Superior Court of Islamabad (IHC) on the issue of appeals against the Civil Court decisions that are redirected to the District Courts, since Judge Sardar Ejaz Ishaq Khan raised serious questions about the process and considered that the entire measure is “questionable.”
The matter arose during the hearing of cases previously assigned to two additional judges, who were recently sent back to the district courts after an administrative decision.
During the procedure, the additional registrar EJaz Ahmed appeared before the court and declared that the decision to reallocate such appeals had originated in a meeting of the complete court of 2023, where the issue was discussed.
According to the additional registrar, he simply submitted a note to the President of the Supreme Court, who subsequently constituted a division bank that ordered the reallocation of cases to the district courts.
However, Judge Ejaz Ishaq observed that the meeting of the complete court in question was an advisory nature and did not culminate in any final binding decision. He pointed out that any reallocation of pending appeals could only have been authorized by the full court, not by a division bank.
The judge also pointed out that the judges had not sought contributions or opinion that the appeals were already listening to, despite the fact that the hearings in some of these cases were almost 80 percent.
Referring to the practical consequences of the decision, he commented that returning the cases to the district courts would not only waste judicial time, but would also cause undue difficulties to litigants.
