{"id":36528,"date":"2026-01-17T21:07:52","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T21:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=36528"},"modified":"2026-01-17T21:07:52","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T21:07:52","slug":"phc-seeks-response-on-enforcing-adr-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=36528","title":{"rendered":"PHC seeks response on enforcing ADR system"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>The Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Saturday sought responses from the Secretary Law and the Secretary Libraries and Higher Education on a public interest petition seeking the immediate implementation of the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) system and the declaration of a judicial emergency to ensure swift disposal of pending cases.<\/p>\n<p>A two-member bench comprising Chief Justice PHC Justice SM Atiq Shah and Justice Muhammad Ijaz Khan Sabi heard the petition.<\/p>\n<p>During the hearing, petitioner Advocate Ameer Iqbal appeared before the court and stated that he had filed the petition in the larger public interest.<\/p>\n<p>He informed the bench that more than 2.3 million cases are pending across the country, while only around 40,000 judges are available to handle them, which he termed grossly inadequate.<\/p>\n<p>He further told the court that in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa alone, over 256,000 cases are pending in district courts, while 36,000 cases are awaiting disposal across all benches of the PHC.<\/p>\n<p>The petitioner argued that the backlog was primarily due to a shortage of judicial officers and reliance on the traditional judicial system.<\/p>\n<p>He maintained that ADR systems, widely used around the world and particularly in developing countries, offer an effective mechanism for resolving disputes promptly and often in a single proceeding.<\/p>\n<p>Advocate Iqbal warned that failure to provide timely justice would aggravate social problems and erode public trust in the judicial process.<\/p>\n<p>He added that the federal government had already strengthened the ADR framework and expressed readiness to cooperate with provincial governments, citing positive results at the federal level.<\/p>\n<p>However, he said, the ADR system in K-P remained weak, necessitating urgent measures, including the declaration of a judicial emergency.<\/p>\n<p>During the hearing, the court rejected the provincial law secretary&#8217;s request to be removed as a party, declaring the office a key stakeholder and directing it to submit a reply.<\/p>\n<p>The court also ordered that the Secretary Higher Education be made a party and issued notice for submission of a response.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Saturday sought responses from the Secretary Law and the Secretary Libraries and Higher Education on a public interest petition seeking the immediate implementation of the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) system and the declaration of a judicial emergency to ensure swift disposal of pending cases. A two-member bench comprising Chief [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}