Islamabad:
The Supreme Court has noted that it cannot remain indifferent to the systemic discomfort of the delay in the assessment of cases, adding that justice that is delayed is not only denied justice – it is often justice that is off.
In a four-page verdict on an appeal filed against a Supreme Court order in an auction case, SC complained that the petitioner’s appeal in the case remained pending for High Court for ten years while it took three years to take up the case.
The judgment written by justice sewed Mansoor Ali Shah said the question that the court’s attention was not limited to the validity of the auction; Rather, it expanded whether any meaningful relief could now be awarded after the passage of fourteen years. “Even if the claimant’s claim had a profit, Time’s true has anything but hollowed out its strength,” it said.
The verdict said it is outside Cavil that the court’s courts at any level of the justice system corrode public confidence in the judiciary, undermine the rule of law and disproportionate the weak and vulnerable who cannot afford the cost of long -term trial.
“Delay in the judgment carries severe macroeconomic and societal consequences: it discourages investments, makes contract lusory and weakens the institutional legitimacy of the judiciary.
“The credibility of a legal system rests not only in the righteousness of its decisions, but also in the timeliness of which these decisions are made. The problem is not only administrative, it is constitutional.”
It said the right to access to justice is guaranteed by articles 4, 9 and 10a in the Constitution and that it includes the right to a fair and timely trial. Delay that makes a remedy ineffective or a real illusory amount to a denial of proper process. Justice, to be real, must be both righteous and timely.
The verdict said that over 2.2 million cases are currently awaiting courts over Pakistan, including approx. 55,941 cases for SC alone despite improving the number of judges. These numbers, he said, are not abstract – they represent disputes suspended in time.
It said that delay in the judgment is not just a by-product of docket overload or inefficiency at the branch level; It is a deeper, structural challenge for judicial governance.
