The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Secretariat has written a letter to the Secretary Establishment Division to bound all the ministries, divisions, and departments to provide details of their court cases till June 7. The letter observes that the ministries, divisions and departments are doing weak follow-up of court cases and the process adopted for hiring of lawyers and legal firms on nominal charges inflicted huge financial losses to the government.
The committee also argued that the government entities including National Bank of Pakistan are requested to provide details of court cases, list of legal advisors and legal firms and the proportion of winning the court cases to the committee. The committee already abolished the government's criteria for selecting lawyers that defended tax-related cases in courts after it learnt that the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) was losing nine out of every 10 cases due to the weak panel of lawyers. Over Rs 150 billion worth of tax-related cases are pending at various stages and the FBR is trying to win these by paying Rs 30, 000 per case fee to a lawyer. Around 700 lawyers were on the panel of the FBR which were 1,900 in the past.
The committee also directed the Capital Development Authority (CDA) to revamp its Legal Wing and hire well reputed law firm to pursue its cases. Currently, the Authority hired 96 lawyers wherein one was legal advisor and five were assistant legal advisors. As many as 500 cases were of high profile that are pending in the Supreme Court, 1000 in high court and around 3000 in lower courts. The authority is paying Rs 50,000 to a lawyer for appearance in the Supreme Court, Rs 40,000 in the high court and Rs 20,000 in civil court.