SC says it lacks jurisdiction over NAB matters

The Supreme Court has ruled that it no longer has jurisdiction to hear matters arising under the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO),1999—a law that governs the National Accountability Bureau (NAB)—declaring that all pending appeals and bail-related petitions in NAB cases stand transferred to the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) following recent amendments to the law. In a detailed 30-page judgment authored by Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar, a three-member bench held that the court could no longer take cognisance of NAB cases in view of Article 175F(a) of the Constitution read with Sections 32 and 32A of the National Accountability Ordinance, 1999. The bench was adjudicating questions arising after recent amendments to the NAO, including whether pending appeals in NAB cases should be transferred to the FCC and whether bail applications in such cases also fall within the constitutional court's jurisdiction.

"As a consequence thereof, all criminal petitions for leave to appeal and criminal appeals in which leave has been granted and are pending in this Court arising out of the NAO, 1999 stand transferred by fiction of law to the FCC," the judgment said. The bench observed that the right of appeal introduced through Section 32A of the NAO had become a statutory remedy with retrospective effect, impacting all pending civil petitions for leave to appeal by automatically converting them into direct second appeals, while criminal petitions in which leave had already been granted would now be heard by the new appellate forum. The judgment described the amendment as a beneficial and remedial provision that creates an additional appellate layer in the form of a second appeal, serving the interests of accused persons.

It added, however, that the Amendment Act, 2026, would have no effect on cases that had already been finally decided. The court further held that the introduction of the second appeal had shifted the final appellate forum in accountability cases from the Supreme Court to the FCC. "For all intents and purposes, a vested right of second appeal has restructured or transformed a final appellate terminus or destination of accountability cases away from this Court to the FCC…