The petitions against the NRO attain significance because the present chief justice is retiring on March 21.

ISLAMABAD The Supreme Court is expected to resume next week hearing long pending petitions challenging the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) promulgated by former president Pervez Musharraf on the demand of slain PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto to provide amnesty to holders of public office charged in different corruption cases between 1986 and 1999.

Informed sources told Dawn that a five-member bench of the apex court might commence proceedings from the point where it had been left.

The ordinance was promulgated by Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf on Oct 5, 2007, to provide immediate relief to Ms Bhutto by giving indemnity in all cases registered against her by the Nawaz Sharif government.

Legal experts said the petition challenging the validity of the NRO had been a constant worry for its beneficiaries because the cases could be revived if the apex court held the ordinance to be against the Constitution and, therefore, illegal.

However, they said, President Asif Ali Zardari enjoyed constitutional immunity under Article 48(2) of the Constitution and cases against him would remain pending as long as he occupied the presidency.

The petitions against the NRO also attain significance because the present chief justice is retiring on March 21.

On Feb 27 last year, a Supreme Court bench comprising Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar, Justice Mohammad Nawaz Abbasi, Justice Faqir Mohammad Khokhar, Justice Ijaz-ul-Hassan and Justice Chaudhry Ejaz Yousaf had vacated its earlier order of freezing two sections of the NRO, thus allowing beneficiaries to enjoy the fruit of the ordinance.

The court later ordered deletion of relevant paragraphs from the order earlier dictated by a pre-emergency bench headed by deposed chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry blocking the beneficiaries from claiming any protection of a concluded action in any pending case under sections 6 and 7 of the NRO.

The bench under the deposed chief justice had described the ordinance as being against public interest because it provided a blanket cover to people who had committed corruption. It had held that any action and benefit drawn or intended to be drawn by any of the public office-holder would be subject to the decision on the pending petitions.

However, the order deleting relevant paragraphs allowed the concerned courts to pursue cases pending with them in accordance with the ordinance.

As a result of this order, an accountability court cleared President Zardari of five corruption charges under the NRO on March 5 last year. He was cleared of the remaining charges on April 14 last year.

The Supreme Court is presently seized with two petitions —one filed by former PPP stalwart Dr Mubashar Hasan and the other by retired bureaucrat Roedad Khan. The court had dismissed three other petitions filed against the NRO by PML-N President Shahbaz Sharif, Jamaat-i-Islami Amir Qazi Hussain and Tariq Asad. Advocates-on-record of Mr Sharif and Qazi Hussain told the court that they had no instruction to pursue the case while Tariq Asad was not present.

The biggest beneficiaries of the NRO were leaders of the PPP, MQM, PML-Q and PML-N and some former bureaucrats and military officers.