Daily Times

Accepting the intra-court appeal of the government and National Bank of Pakistan on Thursday, a division bench of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) suspended a single-member bench decision that set aside appointment notifications of National Bank of Pakistan President Arif Usmani and NBP board of directors Chairman Muhammad Zubyr Soomro. A single-member bench of the IHC comprising Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kiyani had declared both the appointment notifications illegal on June 28. Federal finance ministry and National Bank of Pakistan challenged the verdict while filing Intra Court Appeal against the decision claiming that no irregularity had been committed while issuing the notifications for filling the slots. Syed Jahangir, Javed Iqbal, Fazal Raheem, and Latif Qureshi have challenged the appointments while assailing the government’s notifications of 2019 in the matter. Resuming the hearing of the ICA on Thursday, the two-member bench of the Chief Justice Athar Minallah and Justice Aamir Farooq set aside the single-member bench decision. During the course of proceedings, the bench took up separate appeals filed by the Ministry of Finance and the NBP challenging the IHC single bench verdict.