Revolution if the poor don’t get justice: SC judge

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The image shows a protest in Islamabad. — Photo by PPI

Revolution if the poor don’t get justice: SC judge
Staff Reporter | 15 hours ago​

ISLAMABAD, July 17: The senior-most judge of the Supreme Court, Mian Shakirullah Jan, warned on Tuesday that the country might witness a revolution if hurdles in the way of justice for the poor were not removed.

Speaking as chief guest at a ceremony held in connection with the International Justice Day and launching of the Legal Empowerment of the Poor Programme, Justice Jan said: “If everybody is treated equally and the lamp of justice throws light without any discrimination, then life on the planet becomes peaceful. But when the lamp of justice is broken, the darkness begins to spread in society.”

Justice Jan said that injustice in society tore the very fabric on which depended the net of social life. Terming injustice a threat to all segments of the society, he quoted Martin Luther King who said: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”.

“If we do not remove hurdles in the way of justice for the poor, this will in turn destroy peace of society like a monster. The people who are still sleeping over the issue will hardly get an opportunity to save themselves from the flood of revolutionary change,” he said.

The Supreme Court judge said the world had turned into a global village and injustice anywhere in society had cross-border impact.

He said that instability in one country badly affected the peace of the other countries. “In the present scenario when the world is in the evil clutches of terrorist activities, this fact hardly needs any elaboration,” he said.

He was of the view that projects for legal empowerment of the poor were the need of the hour and these would surely help the poor better access to justice.

Justice Jan said that fighting against injustice and ensuring access to justice for all, especially the poor, was a collective responsibility of all segments of society.

He said there were a lot of people who were unable to get their rights because there was little literacy and people lacked knowledge about their fundamental rights and this had aggravated the situation.

He said on the one hand the poor people hardly knew about their fundamental rights and on the other chains of poverty and lack of resources had gripped them.

He said that unequal distribution of wealth had become a menace, depriving society of peace and justice.

He said the poor must be made aware of their rights followed by their practical help when they were unable to take any stand before the powerful people of society and faced difficulties in approaching courts and agencies responsible for redressing their grievances.

He said that judiciary was not ignorant of all these issues and it was aware that it was the constitutional responsibility of the state to ensure justice to all segments of society, especially the poor.

Justice Jan said that judiciary was facing many challenges because of limited resources, but made it clear “we have neither lost hope nor given up”.

The increasing population and litigation, he said, had posed new challenges to the judiciary, with little number of judges and lack of infrastructure.

“The judge-to-case ratio in some parts of the country is so high that one judge has to handle more than a thousand cases,” he observed.

He lauded efforts of the UNDP and United Nations Office for Project Services, with the aim to provide better access to justice of the poor.

He said that he was thankful to them for working on this noble cause for the poor people.

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