Ministries, divisions directed to comply with orders by the court

ISLAMABAD: Ministry of Law and Justice (MoJ) has directed all the Ministries/ Divisions to comply with the court’s order strictly with respect to preparations and submission of report/ para-wise comments and personal appearance.

Law Ministry, in a letter to all the Ministries/ Division, issued with the approval of Secretary Law, has stated that in order to maintain an effective and efficacious liaison and to overcome the communication gap between Law Officers and Departments following guidelines be followed to avoid the subject issue in future: (i) comments and other relevant documents asked for by the Courts should be provided promptly, preferably within seven days of the letter sent by the concerned law officer to the Government Department; (ii) dealing officer of the concerned Division must ensure that an additional copy of the comments and the documents are provided to the concerned law officer.

It is not enough that only the Court is provided with the comments and not the Law officer as that will leave the law officer in the dark and create unnecessary problems; (iii) the concerned Division is responsible for preparation the report/ para-wise comments according to their distribution of work; (iv) upon Court notice, if the Court calls any representative of the concerned Division with the direction that not the below the rank of Additional Secretary/ Joint Secretary then the Head of the concerned Division will be responsible to appear before the court along with concerned dealing Section Officer; (v) it is the duty of the concerned Division that if it is required to contact/ brief the nominated Law officer a responsible officer not below the rank of BPS-17, well conversant with facts of the case preferably stationed near the place of hearing, may be deputed to contact/ brief the counsel and hand over the case papers, and file its report/ para-wise comments in the court with consultation of the nominated Counsel; and (vi) the report/ para-wise comments asked for by the Court should be submitted before due date as normally court does not entertain/ receive report/ para-wise comments less than two days left for fixation of the case.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022