n September 6, a Supreme Court bench, led by Justice Qazi Faiz Issa, restored changes to the country’s anti-graft law.

In 2023, a three-member SC bench, headed by the then chief justice Umar Ata Bandial had, in a 2-1 verdict, nullified these changes to the National Accountability Ordinance.

Earlier, the Pakistan Democratic Movement government had made several changes to the laws governing the National Accountability Bureau, including limiting its jurisdiction to cases involving over Rs 500 million. The amendments had been challenged by former prime minister Imran Khan.

In a 16-page verdict, the court said they had allowed the appeals and set aside the 2023 judgment and dismissed the petition filed by Imran Khan. It remarked that whenever possible, the SC “must try to uphold legislation rather than rush to strike it down.” The court noted that the petitioner had “failed to establish that the amendments were unconstitutional.”

I has been argued that the procedure for making appointments under the revised law is more transparent and the changes align the process of the selection of judges more closely with the parliamentary oversight. Thus, enabling the federal government to appoint judges instead of limiting it to the will of a single person, who may be more prone to bias than a parliamentary forum. It also transfers the power to make appointments to people’s representatives. However, critics have argued that this could further politicise the accountability courts because a politically motivated federal government will be appointing judges.

In the 16-page verdict, the court said they had allowed the appeals and set aside the 2023 judgment and dismissed the petition filed by former prime minister Imran Khan. It remarked that whenever possible, the SC “must try to uphold legislation rather than rush to strike it down.”

In addition to curbing the powers of the president, the amendment also limits NAB’s jurisdiction to cases involving alleged graft of Rs 500 million or more. Imran Khan had called June 20, 2022, the day the amendment was made a “black day in the history of Pakistan,” lamenting that this would allow scores of people charged with white collar crime to escape the NAB net. According to the BBC, the amendments had resulted in cases involving alleged graft totaling Rs 1.2 trillion being removed from the bureau’s purview. When the Supreme Court struck down the amendment on September 16, 2023, a number of cases were re-opened against prominent politicians such as Asif Ali Zardari, Nawaz Sharif, Shahbaz Sharif, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, Khawaja Asif, Khawaja Saad Rafique and Rana Sanaullah. Khan argued that raising the NAB threshold to Rs 500 million had not been a good change. However, the amendments are now part of the National Accountability Ordinance after being restored by a five-member bench led by the chief justice of Pakistan in a unanimous 5-0 decision.

A major takeaway from the verdict is the current Supreme Court’s attitude towards separation of powers in the constitutional scheme. The CJP noted that “The chief justice and the judges of the Supreme Court are not the gatekeepers of parliament.”

The writer is a law student at Queen Mary University, London. He can be reached at husnaingill09012004@gmail.com