ISLAMABAD: The Sen­ate standing committee on law and justice reached a consensus on Thursday to curtail powers of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) so that it could not lay hands on provincial departments and deal with issues falling into provincial domain.

But the chairman of the committee, Mohammad Javed Abbasi, deferred (a final decision on) the matter till next meeting to be held on Jan 27.

“Mr Abbasi’s attitude indicates that the federal government wants to keep provinces in its clutches. Therefore it is not ready to curtail unjustified powers of the NAB,” Taj Haider, the mover of the National Accountability (amend­ment) Bill-2015, said after the meeting.

Talking to Dawn, he said that though there was a consensus in the meeting on the proposed bill envisaging no interference of NAB into provincial departments, the matter was deferred till the next meeting.

“I believe that misusing accountability law for political victimisation is the highest form of corruption.”

Mr Haider said that nobody could defend corruption committed by politicians but it was a fact that ‘the establishment is the fountainhead of corruption’.

A majority of the committee members agreed that NAB laws were not criminal laws as projected by the law ministry in a statement submitted to the panel.

“There is no criminal law in the country but penal laws and criminal procedure laws,” Senator Farooq Naek said.

After the 18th Amend­ment, federal laws could not be implemented in the provinces, he said and added that the (federal) government could not make any law which was contrary to the Constitution.

The senator said that the chairman of the committee had deferred the matter to the next meeting on the ground that Raja Zafarul Haq, a PML-N senator, was not present in the meeting.

Babar Awan said that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif as opposition leader during the previous PPP government had promised to repeal NAB laws while agreeing that they were used for political victimisation. “But now that he is in power, he is defending the laws.”

During the last meeting of the committee when opinion of provinces was sought on the issue, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government had backed PPP move to curtail powers of premier anti-corruption body through legislation so that it could not take up corruption cases which came into provinces’ domain.

A representative of the KP government had said that the NAB should not take up cases which were purely related to provincial departments and public office holders and that every province should set up its own accountability institution similar to one established in KP.

The private member bill titled National Accountability (Amendment) Act 2015 was moved in the Senate in November after arrest of Dr Asim Hussain, a PPP leader. At present, he is in NAB custody for his alleged involvement in mega corruption scams.

The bill seeks to amend different sections of the National Accountability Ordinance 1999 with an aim to restrict NAB’s jurisdiction to the departments and ministries of federal government.

The bill’s says: “It is essential that all statutory organisations must act strictly within the parameters laid by the Constitution of Pakistan and there should be no transgression or interference in matters pertaining to the provinces.”

Initially, the government did not oppose the motion for tabling the bill in the Senate and allowed the chairman to refer it to the committee. But now it seems to be reluctant to support the opposition’s move.

Political experts believe that the bill can cause a friction between the ruling party and the PPP as the latter has been accusing the government of using NAB as a tool to victimise its opponents, particularly against PPP members and Sindh government officials during the drive against corruption.

Published in Dawn, January 15th, 2016