The outgoing chief justice Saqib Nisar will be remembered for being autocratic and interfering in matters which should not have concerned him. There was, for instance, his obsession with building dams. Even though experts said that mega dams are bad for the environment, he made it treasonable to oppose the construction of dams. Only very bold people wrote about dams after this edict. For this reason, he has been re-named "the dam chief justice" in the social media.
Then there were his visits to hospitals, causing a lot of disruption. He objected to the high salaries of doctors, forgetting that many of them had come back to serve Pakistan despite earning high salaries abroad.
For some inexplicable reason, he ordered school owners to reduce school fees. Anticipating that they would reduce the salaries of school teachers and other staff, he warned them not to do so. He also made it an offence for schools to close down if the owners found it difficult to continue running them. Evidently the learned ex-judge doesn't know how businesses are run. With the high rate of inflation, salaries as well as school fees have to be increased accordingly.
But I wonder why he never said anything about the exorbitant fees charged by lawyers like Aitzaz Ahsan (who reportedly charges Rupees ten million at least for a case). Surely the poor are entitled to have access to affordable legal assistance. Then there are the perks which judges get after retirement (amounting to more than a million rupees a month at least). Why didn't he reduce the salaries and perks of his own fraternity?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Post a Comment