Islamabad: Pakistan’s Senate on Monday passed a bill aimed at discouraging false and frivolous litigation and unnecessary adjournment.
The bill, which empowers courts to impose costs on offending parties, is aimed at providing inexpensive justice and reducing the burden on the legal system.
Minister for Law and Justice Zahid Hamid, who piloted the bill in the House, said thousands of cases were pending before the courts and unnecessary adjournments further led to piling of more cases.
He said the bill would help discourage unnecessary adjournments and false and frivolous cases.
The bill’s statement of objects and reasons says: “There is a maxim of law that ‘justice delayed is justice denied’. This maxim holds good both in civil and criminal cases. In every civilised society there have been constant efforts to evolve ways and means for speedy dispensation of justice.
“There is huge backlog of cases in both subordinate and superior courts of the country. It is, therefore, necessary to find simpler and faster alternates, which can supplement the traditional legal system. As litigation is a very lengthy and expensive process there is a worldwide trend to adopt Alternative Dispute Resolution.”
The bill is another step to providing speedy and inexpensive justice to the people, which was also part of the Pakistan Muslim League — Nawaz (PML-N) election manifesto, he added
The bill’s statement of objects also states that the tendency of filing false and vexatious cases and taking baseless grounds for defence is unfortunately on the increase.
This tendency leads to numerous evils, including heavy expenditure incurred by the affected parties, causing them financial loss and mental torture, apart from wasting precious time of the courts, it says.
