Acting charge, delayed promotions rule NAB corridors.

Byline: Shakeel Ahmed

MULTAN -- Adhocracy rules the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) as offices of directors general (DG) are being run on an acting charge basis by the chairman. Legal experts call such arrangements violation of the Supreme Court ruling.

Eight DG posts are being run by the directors who are working in grade 21 but are getting the 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 DG), and Mirza Irfan Baig (Sukkur DG).

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

Former NAB deputy prosecutor Naeem Khan said that the Supreme Court in its ruling in the Al-Jehad Trust vs the Federation of Pakistan had set parameters. He stated that as the case was regarding the use of the office of NAB chairman by the deputy chairman, the Supreme Court mentioned 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.

Also, NAB laws do not allow such provision.

Advocate Fahim Akhtar Gill said that according to NAB Ordinance of 1999 the chairman NAB may delegate any of his powers to an officer of NAB 'subject to such conditions, if any, as may be specified in the order, for carrying out the purposes of this Ordinance'; assigning the acting charge of the posts of DGs to directors was, however, the violation of the court ruling in the Al-Jehad Trust Case.

He said that NAB authorities were committing contempt of court by continuing this illegal practice.

Besides this adhocracy, 10 administrative officers of grade 20 have not been promoted because of the delay in convening of the promotion board for years.

Sources said the NAB chairman time and again ordered convening the promotion board so that the acting charge DGs are promoted as regular DGs but the board meeting is being delayed to accommodate the Multan DG who is not eligible for promotion as his...