A division bench of the Lahore High Court (LHC) here on Thursday restrained Director General NAB Punjab-Rawalpindi Rana Zahid Mehmood from holding the office after expiry of his contract. The division bench passed this order after federal law ministry in its written reply maintained that after the expiry of service contract on April 21, 2011, Rana Zahid Mehmood has no right to act as NAB Punjab-Rawalpindi DG.
Earlier, the bench heard the arguments at length and also gave an opportunity to Zahid Mehmood to personally argue in his defence. Zahid rejected to accept the reply of law ministry saying it had no role in his appointment or extension. He alleged that there were some hidden motives of federal government behind that reply which declared his functioning illegal.
However, Justice Farooq read out previous notification of Zahid Mehmood's contract appointment as NAB DG Rawalpindi and threw a question that as to why he had not got another notification for extension of service after the expiry of the contract.
Zahid insisted that limited service period was not mentioned in summary of appointment approved by Prime Minister, but the law ministry mentioned one-year service period in bad faith. When asked to tell about the appointing authority, he said President and NAB chairman had the authority to appoint officers from grade 20 and above. However, he said that former NAB chairman Deedar Hussain Shah before relieving his charge following the SC judgement against reappointment policy, had already delegated his powers to deputy chairman. And the deputy chairman had passed on his powers to director human resource, he added.
He also presented a letter issued by NAB human resource director regarding extension in his service, but the court rejected that letter when petitioner's counsel Muhammad Azhar Siddique pointed that the officer was of grade 20 and could not issue such letter with regard to appointment/extension of an officer of grade 21.
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