Lahore High Court establishes Green Benches

LAHORE: Lahore High Court Chief Justice, Sh. Azmat Saeed on Friday established Green Benches comprising the LHC judges and declared all courts of district & sessions judges (D&SJs) and senior civil judges as Green Courts to hear all cases related to environmental issues.

The LHC judges will grace courts at Lahore and Rawalpindi as Green Benches while D&SJs will grace green courts at district level and senior civil judges will grace green courts at tehsil level.

According to a notification by LHC Registrar Sohail Nasir, the LHC CJ has nominated Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah to grace Single Green Bench at LHC principal seat and a division bench comprising of Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and Justice Shuhaat Ali Khan has been constituted as Green Bench for environmental cases.

The chief justice has also passed directions that senior most LHC judges available at the benches of the LHC in Multan, Bahawalpur and Rawalpindi will hold the court as single green bench and two senior most available judges will hold court as Division Green bench.

According to another notification, all the courts of senior civil judges and all the courts of civil judges cum judicial magistrates at sub-division level have been declared by chief justice as green courts so as to hear all the cases under the Pakistan environmental protection act 1997 as well as under ordinary jurisdiction involving the issues of environment or relating to environment interest litigation.

At the district level district and session judges (D&SJs) in Punjab have been declared as Green Courts so as to hear all the cases, appeals etc under the environment protection act 1997.

The chief justice has ordered to transfer all the environmental related cases to the Green Benches of the LHC and Green Courts at district and Tehsil level from the courts where they are pending at the moment for further proceedings. (APP)