LAHORE: Federal Law Minister Zahid Hamid said on Wednesday that the Parliamentary Committee on National Accountability Laws had agreed to leave the members of judiciary and military out of new legislation regarding across-the-board accountability.
The year-long process of drafting the accountability law was intended to bring the generals and judges under the ambit of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).
However, the Pakistan people’s party (PPP) withdrew its suggestion of accountability of judges and generals under the new law today, following the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) who already had already rejected the draft bill earlier in October.
PTI leader Shireen Mazari said that all parties were agreed to leave the judges and generals out of the new legislation as the both institutions have their own systems of accountability.
Law Minister termed the existing National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) 1999 as “very harsh” and said parliamentarians wanted a new law to hold people accountable.
“All the under-trial proceedings of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) will be moved to the proposed ‘National Accountability Commission (NAC),” he said.
Hamid also claimed that the PTI was not in fovour of naming the new law the ‘National Accountability Commission Bill, 2017’ instead of National Accountability Bureau Bill, 2017.
The Jamat-e-Islami (JI) also rejected the proposed NAC and submitted its recommendations to the committee.
