Justice Mansoor Ali Shah advocates using arbitration rather than going to court.

The Supreme Court’s senior puisne judge, Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, advised the parties involved to use the Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR) process rather than making regular court appearances.

Speaking at an IBA Karachi conference on Wednesday, he said that 86 percent of Pakistan’s district courts still have cases waiting.

There are about 2.4 million cases pending in subordinate courts. Instead of always going to court, we should try to settle the issue through arbitration,” the leading judge stated.

In order to settle their disputes, he advised the litigants to use alternative approaches.

“The lack of judges is something we are addressing. Just giving stay orders won’t alleviate the problems,” Justice Mansoor Ali Shah stated.

He stated that we must adopt the Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR) approach and modify the way we think.

“In other countries, there are 90 judges for 0.1 million people, but we are far behind here,” Justice Shah stated.