LAHORE, April 2: The chief justice of the Lahore High Court on Wednesday dismissed PPP secretary-general Jehangir Badar’s petition for an intra-court transfer of a NAB reference against him.

The court dismissed the petition on grounds that the reference had been pending before the accountability court for more than a year and it was not feasible, both legally and practically, to transfer it to another court at a stage when a substantial part of the prosecution evidence had already been recorded.

Mr Badar had pleaded in his petition that the trial court was “inclined to favour the NAB in its verdict”.

The NAB counsel, Javed Shaukat Malik, refuted the submission saying the court had in fact been cooperating with the accused during the trial by “generously” allowing almost all of his applications for adjournment, because of which only two prosecution witnesses had been cross-examined during the first 12 and a half months of the trial. The day the judge started the trial on a day-to-day basis following Supreme Court’s directions, the petitioner started smelling a bias in court’s conduct, the NAB counsel added.

He contended that certain parameters had been laid down in Section 526 of the CrPC for an intra-court transfer of a case, and none of those was applicable to the current petition. According to him, the petitioner’s conduct before the trial court did not warrant a relief since he was still seeking adjournments despite SC’s directions for conclusion of the trial within 30 days.

The court observed that the petitioner had failed to show as to which specific moves on the part of court were prejudiced against his interests.

Currently, the trial court is cross-examining the last prosecution witness in this reference, which accuses him of getting people recruited in the Sui Northern Gas Pipeline Limited, Sui Southern Gas Company, Oil and Gas Development Corporation and Pakistan State Oil, asking the PSO managing director for installation of 61 petrol pumps and issuing LPG licences in flagrant violation of the rules, and failing to exercise his authority in stopping the grant of undue benefit to the tune of Rs8 million in favour of Amin Brothers when he was the federal minister for petroleum and natural resources.