Law Reforms to ease out masses sufferings.

ISLAMABAD -- An independent and virtuous judiciary is vital for democracy, governance, security, economic growth, and equity as it ensures the Rule of Law for all citizens. It guarantees protection to the rights of law abiding citizens and serves as a shield against unruly groups or individual's threat to any particular person, community, sect or religion.

One of the strongest aspects an independent judiciary owns is to ensure good governance which helps to establish a just, prosperous and well-balanced society.

Promotion of this culture in any state required frequent reforms of the system to meet the everyday requirement of justice and remedies to neglected and disadvantaged class. But, unfortunately in Pakistan, frequent promise of judicial reforms made by successive regimes for decades remained elusive.

The PTI government after coming into power bore the torch of reforms in judicial system and its successive initiatives provided a ray of hope for reformation of the old age judicial system.

It was the manifesto of the PTI to ensure provision of easy justice to the people, especially the weak segments of society. For implementation of manifesto, Prime Minister Imran Khan, on May 29, 2020, had constituted two committees headed by PM's Adviser on Parliamentary Affairs Dr Babar Awan and Law Minister Farogh Naseem respectively to suggest constitutional reforms and look into the plight of women prisoners and recommend remedial steps for the purpose.

The mandate of the committees was to suggest constitutional reforms and devise a roadmap for implementation of these reforms.

The committee on constitutional reforms was directed to devise a roadmap for prompt implementation of reforms in the criminal justice system, police culture, registration of cases, investigation and prison system and the second committee was formed to suggest reforms for judicial system and women prisoners' wellbeing.

Discussing the reforms introduced by the PTI government in past two years, Federal Law Minister Barrister Dr. Farogh Naseem said the ministry drafted state of art legislation, references, opinions and vetting. 'The statute of Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) was pending since last 10 years and previous governments had failed to enact legislation for a mutual legal assistance regime.'

He said the law ministry drafted the Mutual Legal Assistance law to provide legal support to the requesting state (foreign country) by executing necessary actions on its territory in...