LAHORE, May 12: The Lahore High Court on Monday ruled that all the laws and enactments issued under the Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) were protected by the Legal Framework Order 2002 and could not be questioned by the courts.

The court made this observation while dismissing the petitions of PPP secretary general Jehangir Badar and former Lahore Zila Council chairman Chaudhry Zulfiqar, accused by the NAB of acquiring assets disproportionate to their known sources of income.

The petitioners had challenged the NAB (Amendment) Ordinance 2002 in the LHC on grounds that it was not presented before the Parliament for validation within four months of its promulgation in Nov 2002.

The amended ordinance had revoked the right of appeal given to a NAB-accused by the NAB Ordinance 1999 against the interim orders of the accountability court. The applications of both the petitioners for amendments to the chargesheets against them were dismissed by trial courts, and they had moved the LHC against the orders.

The division bench, comprising Justice Tassadaq Hussain Jilani and Bashir A. Mujahid, observed in its 34-page judgment that under the Article 270-AA of the LFO, all the orders, proceedings, appointments and acts done by any authority or person along with the president’s orders and ordinances, the chief executive’s orders, enactments, notifications, rules and by-laws issued under the earlier PCOs between October 12, 1999 and the date on which this Article came into force, were supposed to have been validly made and could not be questioned in any court on any ground.

The court accepted Deputy Attorney General Sher Zaman Khan and NAB counsel Javed Shaukat Malik’s joint argument that since the 1973 Constitution was revived on March 12, 2003, along with all the LFO provisions, the amended ordinance enjoyed legal protection as it was promulgated within the time lag mentioned in Article 270-AA.

The court further ruled that Article 5-A of the PCO had specifically declared that no order shall be subject to the limitation of time provided in the Constitution regarding its presentation before the Parliament for validation. “In these circumstances it cannot be argued justifiably that the impugned ordinance has lapsed on account of the timeframe envisaged in Article 89 of the 1973 Constitution,” the court observed, adding that this amended law was now part of the NAB Ordinance 1999, and the petitions were therefore not maintainable.

The petitioners’ common plea that they could not be tried on charges of illegally acquiring properties at a time when they were not holding public office, and the chargesheets including such assets be amended to this effect, was also dismissed. The court held that the holder of a public office could be tried for an offence committed when he was not holding the office.

The court refused to take into account the petitioner’s plea that a person other than the holder of a public office could not be tried under the NAB Ordinance. According to the court, the word “person” had been mentioned in the NAB Ordinance in the general sense and included everybody. As held by the court, the petitioners could not claim relief on grounds that they were not accountable for acts they had done in their private capacity.

With regard to Jehangir Badar’s plea that the charges of providing pecuniary advantage to a private civil engineering firm be deleted from the NAB reference as they had already been dismissed by a special court in 1990, the bench observed that it had not been able to make an assessment as to whether the NAB had relied upon fresh material with regard to this charge.

As directed by the bench, in case the prosecution had relied only on the material produced before the special court in 1990, the accountability court would strictly confine itself to the special court judgment in which it was held that no such charge could be made against Mr Badar on the basis of the material placed before it.