Transmenu powered by JoomlArt.com - Mambo Joomla Professional Templates Club

©The Star (Used by permission)

PUTRAJAYA: A special panel has been set up to dispose of some 10,000 backlog cases at the Court of Appeal.

The three-man panel comprising Justices Gopal Sri Ram, Md Raus Sharif and Sulong Matjeraie began its first sitting on Thursday and dealt with 191 appeals.

Justice Sri Ram said the panel was set up after an earlier futile attempt by President of the Court of Appeal (PCA) Tan Sri Zaki Tun Azmi, who had asked for the Bar Council’s cooperation in dealing with the backlog of cases.

As part of that initiative, a dedicated website had been set up to facilitate an anticipated inflow of information from lawyers.

“Earlier, the PCA had written to the Bar Council for their cooperation to provide the Court of Appeal with a list of cases that each lawyer had in this court,” said Justice Sri Ram.

“This was for the purpose of determining which of the appeals were to be proceeded with or to be discontinued.

“Unfortunately, there was no response,” the judge said while hearing the 67 appeals scheduled for yesterday’s sitting.

Justice Sri Ram said the situation necessitated the PCA to appoint a panel to hear and dispose of all pending cases since 1997.

“This process will be carried on from time to time until the backlog is cleared,” he said, adding that the next session would be held next month when some 100 cases would be scheduled.

Justice Sri Ram noted that for the past two days the panel dealt with cases where appeals were against the decisions of judges who had either died or retired.

The next session would deal with judgments that had been written but not collected by lawyers, he said.

It was also noted that a significant portion of the 10,000 backlogged civil and criminal cases involved those that had yet to have their records of appeal filed.

Justice Sri Ram said the membership of the panel was fixed unless the appeals heard are against the decisions of any of the panellists.

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed