The Supreme Court on Monday declared 238 appointments made in Employees Old Age Benefits Institution (EOBI) during the then EOBI Chairman Zafar Gondal''s tenure illegal and ordered that all these vacancies should be refilled in a transparent manner.
Announcing its 42-page reserved judgement over identical petitions regarding illegal appointments and corruption in the EOBI, a three-member bench led by Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali directed National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to investigate the matter of all the illegal appointments including the appointment of Raja Azeemul Haq Minhas, son-in-law of former Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf as Executive Director in the World Bank.
The court also sought a compliance report from the NAB within two months, directing the Bureau to proceed in accordance with law against those involved directly or indirectly in illegal appointments on grounds of corruption, nepotism and political exigencies.
The petitioners, including Syed Mubashir Raja Jaffari, had urged the court to declare all the impugned appointments unlawful, illegal and void ab initio and in violation of prescribed recruitment procedures/operating manual. The petitioners also prayed the court to recover the amount from the EOBI management/respondents who were involved in corrupt practices and behind illegal appointments in the EOBI.
Similarly, Tajamal Hussain had also filed an application with a plea that the recruitments were made in a mala-fide manner, as those individuals who had links with politically influential persons within the then ruling PPP government were appointed. Hussain had drawn court''s attention towards the fact that all posts had been filled without observing due process of appointment procedure of the EOBI.
Moreover, the then Chairman EOBI, Zafar Iqbal Gondal, was also accused of making a large number of appointments from the elected constituencies of his elder brother, Nazar Muhammad Gondal, former Federal Minister of Food and Agriculture, District Mandi Bahauddin and Nadeem Afzal Chann, MNA (NA 64 Sargodha) sitting Chairman, PAC, on the basis of nepotism and corruption.
"All the illegal appointments, deputations and absorptions made in the EOBI, as detailed in the report of a fact-finding committee on recruitment/appointment, are declared to be without lawful authority and of no legal effect; accordingly their services stand terminated forthwith," the court judgement authored by Justice Jamali said. The court also directed its concerned office to maintain a separate file for initiating contempt proceedings, under Article 204 of the Constitution and other enabling provisions of contempt laws, against all those who are, prima-facie, found guilty of violation of its order of January 21, 2011 in H.R.C. No 48012 of 2010, particularly in the process of appointment of 238 employees/officials during the period from September 2011 to May 2012.
The court observed that the record shows that these 238 employees in Grade-1 to Grade-9 were initially appointed on a contract basis and for this purpose a procedure prescribed under the Rules and Regulations of respondent EOBI was again flagrantly and ruthlessly violated.
Not only this, subsequently, in a colourable and mala fide manner, for their regularisation some summaries were floated and their illegal approval was obtained from the Cabinet Sub-Committee, which otherwise neither figures anywhere in the hierarchy of EOBI nor has any legal authority to rectify such illegal, wrong and corrupt practice of appointments," the judgement said.
The court observed it is essential that all appointments to public institutions must be based on a process that is palpably and tangibly fair and within the parameters of its applicable rules, regulations and bye-laws. But conversely, according to the court, it is a sad fact of our bureaucracy that it can be so susceptible to the whims and wishes of the ruling elite class etc, which results in an obvious weakening of state institutions such as the EOBI, whereby the general public, whose interest such establishments have been charged with protecting, are adversely and heavily affected in different ways.
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