The Supreme Court on Friday settled a jurisdictional dispute by declaring it cannot hear bail applications in pending National Accountability Bureau (NAB) appeals, adding all such pending criminal appeals stand transferred to the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC).
“This court has no jurisdiction to take cognizance in the NAB cases in terms of Article 175F(a) of the Constitution, read with Section 32 and 32-A of the National Accountability Ordinance, 1999 (NAO),” read the 30-page judgement authored by Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar, who headed a three-member bench deliberating the matter.
Referring to arguments of counsels that the Supreme Court should not surrender its jurisdiction, the ruling observed that courts could “not play to the gallery” for admiration, popularity and media commendations or for public perception, and instead should adhere to the law and Constitution. The duty of the court was to follow the law and not make decisions or assume a jurisdiction motivated by media mileage or public consumption, it added.
“We are fully conscious and also sanguine that neither the court should assume the jurisdiction not vested in it by law nor it should abdicate its jurisdiction so vested under the law, rather, the jurisdiction is decided by the Constitution and the law itself. It is not a matter of surrender or conquest, but it is regulated by the law,” it said.
The bench observed “unbridled judicial overreach, including flagrant misuse of suo motu powers as might is right in the past, unremittingly harmed the institutional image and its legitimacy and ultimately resulted in many legislative changes in the Constitution and the laws of our judicial system.” It noted that if a court does not possess statutory jurisdiction over a matter, it must step away without any intervention. No judge is robed, crowned or sceptered as a king to do whatever suits his whim and caprice as one-man rule,” read the judgement.
Earlier, during the hearing, NAB had argued that after the insertion of Section 32-A in the NAO, the Supreme Court did not have the jurisdiction to proceed and decide criminal petitions under consideration for leave to appeal. It said only the FCC had the jurisdiction in all NAB cases, including bail applications.