ISLAMABAD: Former law minister and senior vice president of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Dr Babar Awan withdrew an application seeking his acquittal in the Nandipur corruption reference on Friday.

Subsequently, the accountability court decided to frame charges against Mr Awan and six other accused in the reference on March 11.

The PTI leader filed the application under section 265-K of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) in the accountability court in October last year.

On Feb 11, the court reserved decision on the acquittal plea after Mr Awan and the prosecutor of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) concluded their arguments.

The court was scheduled to announce the verdict on Feb 25. However, the announcement was deferred to March 8.

When the court was about to announce the verdict on Friday, Mr Awan submitted that he wanted to withdraw his application.

Though there is no bar in the law on withdrawal of an application filed under section 265-K of the CrPC, according to legal experts after the conclusion of arguments when the court was about to announce its verdict such a withdrawal was unusual and an accused takes the application back on apprehension of an adverse decision.

However, talking to mediapersons Mr Awan claimed that since March 8 was being celebrated as the International Women’s Day, he visited his 95-year-old mother early in the morning and she advised him to follow due process of law.

He said he decided to withdraw his application in the light of his mother’s advice.In his application, Mr Awan argued that NAB had accused him of causing delay in furnishing legal opinion on the Nandipur project when he was the law minister. It said causing delay was not a crime and the prosecution could not point out any criminal intent behind the alleged delay.

The application said former prime minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf had been nominated as an accused in the reference for not referring the matter to the federal cabinet whereas Mr Awan’s stance was also the same that the matter could have been decided by the then cabinet.

No summary had been kept pending before Mr Awan instead there was only a letter from Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) whereas according to Rules of Business Pepco was not supposed to write the letter to the law ministry directly but through the controlling ministry which was the water and power division.

On Sept 5, NAB Rawalpindi filed a reference against seven politicians and officials contending that the project had faced a delay of two years, one month and 15 days.

The Nandipur project was approved by the Economic Coordination Committee on Dec 27, 2007, at a cost of $329 million.

After approval, the contract was signed on Jan 28, 2008, between the Northern Power Generation Company Limited and the Dong Fang Electric Corporation, China and two consortiums – Coface for 68.967 million euros and Sinosure for $150.151m – were set up for financing the project.

The water and power ministry sought legal opinion on the project from the law ministry in accordance with the schedule of the agreement in July 2009 but the accused repeatedly refused to do so.

The ministry of water and power also failed to take any concrete steps to resolve the issue and the matter remained pending.

According to NAB, the legal opinion was issued in Nov 2011 after Mr Awan was replaced as the law minister.

During the course of investigation, it was established that the accused committed the offense(s) of corruption and corrupt practice.

Recently, the auditor general of Pakistan (AGP) detected over Rs80 billion irregularities in the Nandipur project that included over Rs17 billion loss due to the delay caused by the law ministry.

Published in Dawn, March 9th, 2019