SC restores changes to NAB laws, accepts appeals against previous ruling

The Supreme Court on Friday restored changes to the country’s anti-graft laws as it accepted the federal government’s appeal against the court’s Sept 15 verdict, which struck down those amendments.

Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Qazi Faez Isa pronounced the verdict reserved by a five-member bench on June 6 after hearing intra-court appeals (ICAs) filed by the federal government and other parties.

In September 2023, then-CJP Umar Ata Bandial and Justice Ijazul Ahsan had accepted PTI founder Imran Khan’s 2022 petition while Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah dissented from the 2-1 verdict. Imran’s plea had challenged the changes introduced by the coalition government at the time, led by the PML-N.

The amendments made several changes to the National Accountability Bureau’s (NAB) laws, including reducing the term of the NAB chairman and prosecutor general to three years, limiting NAB’s jurisdiction to cases involving over Rs500 million, and transferring all pending inquiries, investigations, and trials to the relevant authorities.

Today, judges of the bench — headed by CJP Isa and also including Justices Aminuddin Khan, Jamal Khan Mandokhail, Athar Minallah and Hasan Azhar Rizvi — reached the courtroom where the chief justice announced the verdict.

In a 16-page verdict issued today, the five judges said they allowed the appeals “by setting aside” the Sept 15 judgment and dismissed the petition filed by Imran. “However, there is no order as to costs,” the order added.

“The chief justice and the judges of the Supreme Court are not the gatekeepers of parliament,” the verdict observed.

It further noted that whenever possible, the SC “must try to uphold legislation rather than rush to strike it down”. “And if there be two or more interpretations of any legislation, to adopt the interpretation which upholds it,” the verdict added.

The court also noted that Imran’s petition and the Sept 2023 ruling “failed to establish that the amendments were unconstitutional”.

The Sept 15 ruling had restored corruption cases against public representatives, with prominent politicians who allegedly benefited from the amendments being likely to face cases again.

However, a month later, the apex court had been seized with a number of ICAs — moved by the federal government as well as by private citizens Zuhair Ahmed Siddiqui, who was an accused in a corruption case but not a party to the challenges to the NAB amendments case, and Zahid Imran.

Hearings on the matter in May had seen the judges debate whether to live-stream the case (as done on May 14) or not, before finally deciding against live broadcast due to concerns about the facility being politically misused.

PDM govt’s ‘act of desperation’ legalised: lawyer

In his comments to Dawn.com on today’s ruling, legal expert Barrister Asad Rahim termed it “yet another strange and barely reasoned decision”.

“That NAB was born a dictator’s weapon, meant as an instrument for coercion, was plain for all to see; it required serious reform from the beginning,” he acknowledged.

However, Rahim said the then-Pakistan Democratic Movement’s “solution — to gut the entire organisation via a set of person-specific amendments — was laughably illegal: a small segment of the political class getting rid of cases against itself”.

“That act of desperation has now been legalised by the court, on the basis that the public’s fundamental rights haven’t been affected,” the lawyer noted.

“This is Nero playing the lyre: by the same metric, the Supreme Court should have decided to the contrary when it came to the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) — another exercise in which undemocratic forces had to launder politicians for cobbling together a government,” Rahim said, referring to the 2009 SC verdict that declared the NRO unconstitutional.

“These are bad decisions making for bad jurisprudence — the kind bereft of law, precedent, or serving the public interest,” the barrister concluded.

NAB case history

In 2022, amendments were made to the country’s accountability laws by the then-Pakistan Democratic Movement-led government.

The amendments made several changes to the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) 1999, including reducing the term of the NAB chairman and prosecutor general to three years, limiting NAB’s jurisdiction to cases involving over Rs500 million, and transferring all pending inquiries, investigations, and trials to the relevant authorities.

Subsequently, Imran had moved the apex court against the amendments, claiming that the changes to the NAB law were made to benefit the influential accused persons and legitimise corruption.

The petition had pleaded that the fresh amendments tend to scrap corruption cases against the president, prime minister, chief ministers and ministers and provide an opportunity to the convicted public office-holders to get their convictions undone.

In September 2023, after 53 hearings, the SC announced its 2-1 verdict, ordering the restoration of corruption cases against public office holders that were withdrawn due to the amendments and declaring Imran’s plea to be maintainable.

The next month, a five-judge SC bench took up intra-court appeals (ICAs) against its Sept 15 judgment and stopped accountability courts from issuing a final verdict in graft cases.

However, CJP Isa had hinted that the proceedings could be started afresh if the counsel managed to “make a solid case” for the same, as earlier proceedings did not satisfy the requirements of the Supreme Court (Practice and Procedure) Act 2023.

The SC then resumed hearing the ICAs on May 14, with Imran attending the subsequent hearings via video link as per court orders since he was a petitioner in the case.