Karachi: Opposition leader in the Sindh Assembly, Khawaja Izharul Hasan, on Tuesday vowed to further question hefty payments to private lawyers by the province, despite there being a large team of public prosecutors working for the Sindh government.
On Monday provincial law minister Ziaul Hasan Lanjar, replying to a question, told the provincial assembly the government hired nine private lawyers in different cases and they were paid a sum of 231.2 million rupees (Dh8.1 million).
Of the total amount paid to the private lawyers, the largest sum of 216.7 million rupees was for Farooq H. Naek, the former chairman of Pakistan’s Senate, former law minister and a veteran lawyer as well as very close confidant of former president Asif Ali Zardari.
“This is taxpayer money and we will raise the question in the assembly seeking the reasons on what ground such payments were made to the private lawyers,” Hasan told Gulf News.
The law minister had submitted the official reply to the assembly in response to a question that was posed by a legislator of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) to which Hasan belongs.
The minister told the assembly that private lawyers and firms were engaged to represent the provincial government in the courts in 34 different cases during the period of 2013 to 2016.
In his written statement to the house, the law minister said Advocate Naek was paid 51 million rupees for appearing in two cases relating to health departments: 27 million rupees for land utilisation department and 21 million rupees for finance department cases.
Moreover, advocate Naek was also paid 18.7 million rupees, 19.5 million rupees and 14.5 million rupees in the cases of revenue department; forest and wildlife department and excise and taxation department respectively.
“We dont know the nature of the cases but it seemed that private cases might have been rated as the public sector cases and the nation needs to know it,” Hasan further said.
The lawyers who did not want to be named commented that the money paid to the private lawyer tantamount to be the political bribe and glaring favouritism by the government.
The law and justice sector in the province as well as the country has been a matter of grave concern for the general public that keep yearning for pursuing their cases for the want of money and their cases keep pending in the courts for years, and even for decades.
Pakistan’s National Assembly was of late apprised that over 1.7 million cases had been pending in the Supreme Court of Pakistan as well as the lower courts.
