Establishment of judicial system in Fata: 52 judicial officers, infrastructure of Rs13,869 million needed

PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court (PHC) requires 52 judicial officers and infrastructure of Rs13869 million for establishment of judicial system in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) after its merger with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The court has completed work on the requirement of judges, courts and clerical staff for extension and establishment of judicial system after the Fata merger with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. As per the document available with The News, the PHC has forwarded the summary to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government for human resource and infrastructure requirements in case of the merger of Fata with the KP.

It was explained in the document that Rs9528 million is required for establishment of seven judicial complexes at tehsil level in all the tribal agencies and Rs4341 million is needed for seven judicial complexes at the district level in the agencies. The summary said seven district and sessions judges one for each agency and 14 additional sessions' judges (two each in five tribal agencies, including Kurram, Bajaur, Khyber Agency, South Waziristan and North Waziristan, three for Mohmand and one for Orakzai) along with 365 Para-legal staff are required.

Similarly, for establishment of civil courts, it said, seven senior civil judges for each agency and 24 civil judges including four for Kurram, five for Bajaur, one for Mohmand, five for Khyber, four for South Waziristan, three for North Waziristan and two Orakzai along with 458 Para-legal staff are needed.

The sources said the PHC had forwarded the summary to the provincial government some six weeks ago. The official said it was a massive work to do and the government should start work to get prepare for it.

As per the date released by the PHC, the PHC Human Rights Cell has disposed of 86 percent complaints and applications in the last six months about missing persons' cases, prisoners' complaints from prisons, mentally ailing persons in jails, grievances related to environmental issues, and free legal aid to needy people including prisoners. The cell converted complaints into writ petitions for redressing the birth place as jails for the new born babies of women prisoners in jails and corrected it as per the parents' date of birth place in the birth certificates.

In the last six months, the PHC has record 105 percent disposal of cases. It said that 1,376 cases were instituted in the high court, while 14,482 cases were disposed. However, currently a total of 36,360 cases are pending in the PHC.

About the role of PHC Member Inspection Team (MIT), it said, the MIT has collected and compiled declaration of assets of the judicial officers for the financial year 2016-17. It said that MIT carried out surprise and schedule visits of district courts. It said that a total of 38 complaints were instituted against the judicial officers, of which 27 were disposed of and 11 are pending. It said that two complaints were instituted with MIT against two high court staff of which one has been disposed of. There were seven against district judiciary staff, of which six were disposed of and 37 general complaints were received and 30 were disposed of.