MULTAN: The Senate Committee on Law and Justice will take up on Wednesday (tomorrow) the matter of giving current/acting charge to the officers of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), including its eight director generals (DGs), Dawn has learnt.

NAB Chairman retired Justice Javed Iqbal will appear before the committee to brief it over various issues, including criteria for giving current/acting charge to officers and the duration of such arrangements, besides details of the officers working on deputation, current/acting charge basis.

According to the meeting agenda, the NAB chairman will also provide details of officers whose services have been absorbed/merged in the bureau and officers who served in NAB multiple times on deputation and current/acting charge besides the number of instances where the regular officers of NAB were superseded by the deputationists, as well as current/acting charge officers and (officers) who were subsequently regularized/merged in NAB.

The chairman will brief the committee regarding working and overall performance of the bureau, including procedure for taking cognizance of cases, inquiry and prosecution, details of pending cases at various stages along with current status and reasons for pendancy in each case, details of recovery made during the last three years

Eight DG posts are being run by the grade 21 directors, but are getting salaries of grade 20. Of them, three have been on acting charge since 2014. They are Mirza Sultan Saleem (Training DG at NAB Headquarters), Maj Shahzad Saleem (Lahore), and Mirza Irfan Baig (Sukkur).

The other five directors holding the posts of DGs since April 2017 are Farmanullah (Quetta), Atiqur Rehman (Multan), Irfan Mangi (Rawalpindi), Mujahid Akbar Baloch (Human Resource Management at NAB Headquarters) and Fayyaz Qureshi (Awareness and Prevention Wing NAB Headquarter).

Sources say temporary arrangements should be for very short periods and promotion board meeting should be convened on top most priority to ensure transparency in investigations and prosecution as giving charge to non-entitled and junior directors by ignoring entitled senior regular officers opens doors for compromised investigations and prosecution.

They said that as per promotion policy of federal government and NAB two meetings of promotion boards was to be held in a year and in 2019 promotion boards meetings were held for all grades up to BS-21 but no meeting of NAB promotion board was held for BS-21.The officers facing promotion delay include Maj Shahzad, Mujaid Akbar Baloch, Mirza Sultan Saleem, Farmanullah, Mirza Irfan Baig, Fayyaz Quershi, Abdul Hafeez Khan and Irfan Naeem Mangi.

The delay in promotion may cost Mr Baloch too much as he is going to retire in April 2020.

The Supreme Court in its ruling in the Al-Jehad Trust vs the Federation of Pakistan has set parameters in connection with a case regarding the use of the office of NAB chairman by the deputy chairman while stating that the qualification for the office of chairman is much higher than the qualification of the deputy chairman and the deputy chairman is not even qualified to be appointed as chairman as it is a settled proposition of law that cannot be achieved directly under the law, cannot be permitted or allowed to be achieved indirectly.

Published in Dawn, January 21st, 2020