ISLAMABAD: In an encouraging development, the otherwise reform-shy Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has constituted a high-level Law Reforms Committee to prepare draft legislation in consultation with stakeholders for the much-demanded law reforms in the country. According to a PM Office order, issued on November 28, Minister for Climate Change Zahid Hamid has been made chairman of the committee, whose members include Attorney General Salman Butt, Special Assistant to PM Kh Zaheer Ahmad, Special Assistant to PM on Law Ashtar Ausaf Ali Khan, Special Assistant to PM on Human Rights Zafarullah Khan and Joint Secretary PM Office Kazim Niaz. The Terms of Reference of the committee are: (1) To process the law reform proposals contained in the manifesto of the PML-N 2013. (2) To consider the law reform proposals made by the Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan and other relevant institutions and committees of any other persons. (3) To prepare draft legislative bills for reforms. (4) To share the draft legislative bills with the relevant stakeholders. (5) To put up the draft legislative bills for approval of the prime minister/ cabinet. (6) Initiate and follow up the legislative process for enactment of the draft legislative proposals. (7) To create awareness and acceptability for the law reforms. All the ministries, divisions, attached departments and autonomous bodies have been directed to facilitate the committee to attain the set goals. Draft package of legal reforms to overhaul the country’s criminal justice system besides checking massive civil litigation and improving the highly exploitative existing First Information Report (FIR) scheme, has already been prepared by the government legal experts. As reported by The News recently, the package includes a change in the present law to ensure that an FIR was lodged in criminal cases only after complete investigation as was the case in the Federal Investigation Agency. The present system of FIR is found to be highly exploitative where innocent people are harassed and even put behind bars on the basis of false FIRs. The legal package, it is said, seeks reforms in those areas which touch upon the lives of every individual, one way or the other. The draft package suggests elimination of procedure wherein succession certificates/ inheritance registers via institutions including the Lahore Development Authority, Capital Development Authority, are acquired. Under the proposed law, live succession certificates will be processed through Nadra in non-contentious cases. To check inordinate delays stemming from the issuance and receipt of court summons in civil cases, it is proposed to privatise the task, which will help eliminate corruption and slackness on the part of government agencies.To check delays of years and decades in the disposal of civil cases, the number of present multiple appellate fora are being reduced. The reforms also seek the introduction of timelines with milestones as well as penalties/ costs for non-compliance. The package also seeks creation of a Legal Service of Pakistan, which will serve as an incubating ground for incoming talent at all levels of the legal sphere: the training of prospective candidates for civil judge, or officers in various legal capacities including the office of the advocate general, attorney general, public defenders’ office, and the Office of Solicitor General will be introduced. The package also recommends introducing costs of litigation, regardless of which litigant is ultimately victorious. Those costs – i.e. launching an unsuccessful, frivolous claim, shall remain, but whosoever is found to impede the course of justice will also pay costs and whosoever infringes on the prescribed time period shall also pay costs. Regarding criminal matter only, the sessions court is proposed to be empowered to decide such cases at the level of first instance. All existing courts will be upgraded.
