The Lahore Bar Association has warned of a court boycott starting Monday over the mandatory biometric verification system introduced by the Lahore High Court for all case filings in Punjab’s district judiciary, with lawyers across the province arguing that a technology-first reform has been implemented without the technology infrastructure necessary to support it. A lawyers’ convention chaired by LBA President Irfan Hayat Bajwa, attended by representatives of bar associations from across Punjab, opposed the newly introduced biometric verification system for litigants, with Bajwa saying citizens were facing increasing difficulties in accessing justice and warning that lawyers would boycott court proceedings from Monday if the requirement was not withdrawn.
The Lahore High Court issued the biometric verification directive in January 2026, making it mandatory from January 20 for all parties, witnesses, and individuals submitting surety bonds before any case could be filed in district courts across Punjab, with the initiative aimed at preventing impersonation and ensuring greater transparency in judicial proceedings. The policy intent is sound in principle: linking court filings to NADRA’s biometric database is designed to eliminate fictitious litigation, prevent identity fraud, and create a verified digital record for every case that enters the system. However, the District Bar Association Rawalpindi and all six district and 27 tehsil bar associations of Rawalpindi Division have declared the system a complete failure, stating that it takes three to five days to process cases, causing significant delays in bail applications, new filings, and urgent matters, while internet connectivity in district and tehsil courts remains inconsistent, often unavailable during court hours or failing suddenly after brief operation.
Lawyers noted that if biometric verification is essential, then internet services must be available 24 hours a day with fully functional connectivity, and criticised the short 48-hour verification window and the Rs200 fee charged per verification, stating that mandatory biometric verification at every stage of proceedings undermines access to justice, causes delays, and diminishes the practical role of legal representation and power of attorney. Lawyers in Multan staged a sit-in outside the High Court Multan Bench with similar demands, with former bar president Syed Riaz-ul-Hassan Gilani arguing that additional procedural steps including the GRC system and the biometric verification fee were adding barriers rather than facilitating litigants, while also calling for effective video-link hearing facilities to be introduced in Punjab courts as a complementary digital reform.
The resistance from the legal community exposes a recurring challenge in Pakistan’s digitization push across public institutions: technology mandates are being introduced without ensuring that the underlying infrastructure, connectivity, system reliability, and user capacity are in place to sustain them. A biometric identity verification system linked to NADRA is architecturally sound, but its effectiveness depends entirely on stable internet connectivity at every district and tehsil court across Punjab, a condition that clearly does not yet exist. The lawyers’ demands, including extended verification windows, limiting biometric use to specific filing stages rather than every procedural step, and a comprehensive system review, suggest the legal community is not opposed to digitization in principle but to the pace and manner of its implementation in an environment where the foundational digital infrastructure has not kept pace with the policy ambition.
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