‘Sindh govt pays over Rs40m to hire private lawyers’

karachi: The Sindh government is reported to have paid an amount of over Rs40 million to hire the services of senior lawyers to plead its cases in the superior courts.

According to a news report aired by Geo News on Tuesday, these excess payments were detected in the audit of the accounts of the Sindh government’s Department of Law, Parliamentary Affairs, and Criminal Prosecution for the financial year 2022-23 contained in the auditor-general’s report.

The audit report mentions that an amount of Rs44.7 million was spent to hire the services of lawyers privately.

It says the office of the prosecutor general spent an amount of Rs36.8 million to hire the services of lawyers privately in the financial years 2021-22 and 2022-23. While the office of the advocate general spent an amount of Rs7.8 million in the financial year 2022-23 under the same head.

The report mentions that the Supreme Court in 2017 directed the governments not to hire the services of private lawyers. The hiring of employees or legal prosecutors on a contractual basis also violates the directions given by the apex judiciary.

It further says that no appointment order for hiring the services of contractual employees was given as part of the official record. The verification of the disbursal of the legal fee is difficult owing to the absence of any payment formula or standard in this regard. The record also doesn’t provide any information about lawyers, their performance, or any details of the cases for which their services were hired.

The office of the prosecutor general informed Geo News that the Sindh government’s Home Department hired the services of legal prosecutors on a contractual basis. In 2016, the Sindh chief minister accorded approval to the budget transfer to hire the services of a special prosecutor for the Sindh Rangers.

The Advocate General Office told Geo News that the services of the lawyers were hired privately as the “Advocate on Record”. The services of the private lawyers were also availed to dispose of administrative work but no relevant accord was provided to the district account committee.