As the Supreme Court is all set to start hearing of the pending petitions challenging National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) from Monday, former Jamaat-i-Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed on Friday approached the court seeking restoration of his petition on the subject that was dismissed due to non-prosecution.
Filed through Dr Farooq Hassan and Hashmat Habib, Qazi Hussain Ahmed has also pleaded the court in his petition to condone the delay in filing of the application. The application says that "unknown to the petitioner or his counsel who was abroad at the time, the same case was fixed by the court and this particular matter was dismissed for non-prosecution. Although two others (petition on the subject) were allowed to stay on as admitted and were adjourned."
"That this non-prosecution was not intentional, and it is necessary in the interest of justice to allow the petitioner to make his submissions at the final hearing of this matter now fixed for December 7," the application stated. The Supreme Court on Thursday (December 3) constituted a 17-member bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry to hear the petitions and relevant matters involving examination/interpretation of the NRO from next week.
The controversial ordinance was promulgated by former military dictator Pervez Musharraf on October 5, 2007, to provide immunity to leaders and officials from cases registered against them during January 1, 1986 to October 12, 1999. However, soon after the promulgation, the ordinance was challenged in the Supreme Court by Dr Mubashir Hassan, founding member of the PPP, former bureaucrat Roedad Khan, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz President Shahbaz Sharif and former Jamaat-i-Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed.
On February 27, 2008, a five-member larger bench headed by former Justice Abdul Hamid Dogar had dismissed three petitions against the NRO and restored sections 6 and 7 of the Ordinance, which were stayed by the Court earlier. The court had dismissed the three petitions due to non-prosecution as councils of Mian Shahbaz Sharif, Qazi Hussain Ahmed and Dr Tariq Assad Advocate did not appear before the court.