The Supreme Court fixed the hearing of matters pertaining to the government’s failure to implement its verdict in the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) case for the first week of January and asked the president, prime minister and 36 others to explain why the court’s December 16, 2009 verdict declaring the NRO unconstitutional had not yet been implemented in letter and spirit.
The court issued notices to the attorney general and the prosecutor general of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB). It also asked the president and prime minister as well as their principal secretaries, the NAB chairman, provincial governors, chief secretaries, police inspectors general, secretaries of interior, law, cabinet, establishment and home, advocates general, provincial prosecutors general and others, to file by the first week of January their replies explaining why the verdict in question was not implemented despite the fact that there was no stay order against it and a review petition on it had been dismissed last week. Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry issued a fresh order in the NRO implementation case and recalled that the apex court had declared the NRO void ab initio and being ultra vires to the constitution on December 16, 2009, and later dismissed the review plea against it on December 8, 2011. However, he said, the verdict was still not implemented in letter and spirit.
The court said in its December 16, 2009 verdict that all the cases (approximately 8,041) that were closed under the NRO, promulgated by former president Pervez Musharraf, should be reopened, which included the Swiss cases against President Asif Ali Zardari as well. The court orders were implemented in thousands of other cases, but the letter for the restoration of Swiss cases relating to President Zardari was not sent to Swiss authorities. A three-member Supreme Court bench headed by the chief justice had previously heard the NRO implementation case where several top officials faced the music for failing to obey the apex court’s orders, which included former NAB chairman Naveed Ahsan, Prosecutor General Dr Danishwar Malik and Deputy Prosecutor Abdul Baseer Qureshi.
On December 8, 2011, the court had dismissed the government’s review petition against the NRO verdict and told all the authorities concerned to comply with the December 16, 2009 judgement completely and without any further delay.
SC gives January deadline for explanation of NRO fiasco
