ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday reserved its ruling on a thorny jurisdictional dispute over whether it retained the authority to hear bail applications in pending National Accountability Bureau (NAB) appeals or whether such pleas must be transferred to the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC).
Headed by Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar, a three-judge SC bench, also comprising Justices Musarrat Hilali and Shahid Bilal Hassan, hinted while concluding the hearing that the court’s determination would be announced within a day or two.
The dispute before the bench is whether bail applications in pending NAB appeals fall within the category of cases requiring transfer to the FCC, now the top court constituted under the 27th Constitutional Amendment.
The federal government has taken the position before the SC that both appeals and bail applications in pending NAB cases will now be heard by the FCC.
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Senior counsel Ibadur Rehman Lodhi insisted that bail applications filed by under-trial prisoners such as his client fell within the ambit of Section 497 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which deals with the grant of bail, and not Section 426, which relates to the suspension of the sentence of a convicted person by the appellate court. Therefore, the second appeal, as provided under the recently inserted Section 32-A through the NAB Amendment Act, would come into play against convictions handed down by the high courts. In pending matters, the SC is competent to hear bail applications under Section 32 of the NAB law, he argued.
Judge’s observation
On Thursday, Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar observed that the court was not examining parliament’s intention behind amending the NAB law. He added that the SC had not surrendered its authority; rather, the 27th Amendment stated that appeals would go to the FCC.
The observation came when Justice Mazhar wondered how the SC could become the appellate authority in bail matters when the NAB law suggested that the appellate forum was the FCC. The court asked the counsel to suggest a legal way for the SC to hear bail applications in NAB cases.
“For God’s sake, the SC should not surrender its authority for some ‘clandestine’ motives of the government,” Advocate Lodhi replied, emphasising that the court should retain “some semblance of authority”. He said the law did not empower the FCC to hear bail matters; rather, it had made the FCC the appellate forum only for appeals against high court decisions in NAB cases.
Justice Mazhar reminded him that under Article 199, appeals against high court decisions were to be heard by the FCC.
The judge asked whether there was any judicial precedent for the SC to hear a case despite not being the forum of appeal, adding that the court was asking the counsel to suggest some middle ground.
Published in Dawn, July 17th, 2026