In a win for Pakistan ruling coalition government and a disappointment for former Prime Minister Imran Khan, The Pakistan Supreme Court Reinstated the Amendments made to the country’s National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) in last year’s decision, Geo News reported.
A unanimous verdict on the intra-court appeals was handed down by a 5 member bench led by Chief Justice of Pakistan Qazi Faiz Isa and consisting of Justice Aminuddin, Justice Jamal Khan Mandukhel, Justice Athar Minallah and Justice Hasan Azhar Rizvi.
Disapproving the intra-court appeals by the federal and provincial governments, the Pakitan apex court added that PTI chairman khan could not demonstrate that NAB amendments were illegal.
Significantly, the Anti-corruption commission and Pti-khan was added as respondent to the intra-party petitions.
The majority judgement had rendered as unconstitutional the additions made to certain provisions of the National Accountability Bureau Ordinance, 2008.
The amendments – National Accountability (Second Amendment) Act 2022 – were passed in the parliament joint sitting in April 2022 which was the Pakistan democratic Movement (PDM) government that came into office after forcing out ex-PM khan through a no trust motion in 2022 according to Geo News.
It, however, amended certain provisions which are 2, 4, 5, 6, 25, and 26 of the NAB laws. Yet, almost all the amendments were ruled to be “null and void” by the CJP Bandial-led bench while dealing with the petition filed by PTI founder who is facing the charges since June 2022, 9 out of 10 amendments they learnt were sorted.
Likewise, the Exact Also noted that Challenging the amendments that were made to the Ordinance was Never heard and determined as Per Practice and Procedural Rules of the Sudan’s Supreme Court (Practice and Procedure) Act hereinafter referred to as the ‘Act’.
In what was a 2-1 Decide Majority, with dissent from any other 2 and no other reason given and in September Last year, the petition by Imran Khan Against NAB law amendments about which no petition was amended approved by the three members in chamber secondly.
Later, the Federal Government, for its part, filed an intra-court appeal against the Pakistan SC judgement in October as the majority judgement is procedural defective and “appears to be appealable” and adhered to the “Culture of Appeal” practice.
Post amendments, the NAB was permitted to open any graft case only worth greater than Pakistrupees PKR 500 million. The other such conditions imposed were with effect with regard to looking into a fraud case where counting has to be at least more than 100 victims.
The amendments also revised the provisions of registration of NAB law, allowing that a detainee will only be kept for a period of 14 days, however this was abused afterwards oh so that it was kept for 30 days, reports Geo news.
