SHC allows NAB to continue working in Sindh

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) ruled on Wednesday that the country’s top anti-graft watchdog would complete all its ongoing inquiries while the accountability courts would continue to see to the references brought to them.

The court issued the verdict after hearing petitions of the opposition parties that challenged the Pakistan People Party’s recently passed controversial law repealing the National Accountability Ordinance 1999 in the province.

The SHC directed the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to submit a complete list of members of the provincial assembly, senior bureaucrats, former lawmakers and retired government officers facing the watchdog’s corruption cases.

The court told the Sindh advocate general to place on record the minutes of the lawmakers’ deliberations before they passed the repeal bill as well as to verify if the bill was sent to a sub-committee for consideration before being presented before the legislature.

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s Farooq Sattar, the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional’s Shaharyar Mahar and other petitioners claimed that the PPP-led provincial government had “unlawfully passed the bill without any debate in the assembly to stall NAB’s enquiries, investigations and references against bureaucrats and politicians”.

They said the governor had expressed his reservations on the bill and returned it to the legislature for reconsideration, but the PPP lawmakers brought “the same unconstitutional bill to the House without any amendment” and got it passed.

They added that the controversial law could not override the provisions of articles 142 and 143 of the Constitution, and that the accountability act could not have any bearing on the operation of the National Accountability Ordinance 1999.

The Article 142(b) empowers both the federal and provincial assemblies to enact laws regarding criminal law, procedure and evidence, while Article 143 states that if a provincial act conflicts, is inconsistent with or repugnant to a federal statute, then the latter shall prevail even if passed before the former.

The petitioners’ counsels, Farogh Naseem and Faisal Siddiqui, said the controversial law was creating hurdles in NAB’s functioning, adding that the provincial government was restraining its departments from cooperating with the watchdog.

NAB’s Prosecutor General Waqas Dar told the court that the prosecutions of the watchdog’s cases were also being affected because of the new accountability law. Sindh Advocate General Zamir Ghumro said the National Accountability Ordinance 1999 could not be applicable anywhere in the province after the passage of the new accountability act.

The SHC observed that special courts were also working across the province under the federal laws, and asked Sindh’s law officer what the fate of those proceedings would be if the federal laws were not applicable in the province.

Ghumro informed the court that the impugned law was sub judice in the Supreme Court, to which Dar said he had not received a copy of the petition in that regard. The court then directed Dar and the additional attorney general to verify if the proceedings were under way in the top court and submit their statements in the next hearing. The bench gave NAB and the federal government until August 22 to file their comments.

The SHC also issued notices to the federal and provincial law officers on identical petitions filed by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and rights activists against the repeal of the National Accountability Ordinance 1999 in the province.