A unanimous judgement was passed by a three-member bench comprising Justice Shakirullah Jan, Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja and Justice Khilji Arif Hussain. The constitutional petition was filed by Muhammad Yasin, an OGRA employee, who had challenged Sadiq's appointment.
The Court ordered Sadiq to return all the salaries and privileges drawn from the public exchequer in the course of his service as Chairman of the powerful oil and gas sector regulator. "Mr Sadiq, against whom there are a number of corruption allegations, and who purports to have an LLM degree from a 'fake degree-granting' institution, the American University in London, was found falling short of the required standard," stated the judgement.
It has been held that under the law and the Constitution, while the executive retains power to make appointments, it has to exercise this power in a demonstrably fair and honest manner. The judgement outlines a three-pronged test for this which stresses objectivity, relevance and due diligence. Failing this test, appointments made by the Executive will be invalid, and liable to be struck down upon judicial review.
The judgement closely examined the process followed during the appointment of Sadiq. It found the process fraught with serious irregularities. The judgement pointed out that applicants were being selected and rejected in an arbitrary and lawless manner with little attention being paid to objective indicators of their ability and merit.
Such was the incompetence and lack of probity in the selection process that during Sadiq's four interviews and several shortlistings, no one noticed the fake degree he was relying on, or the other unsubstantiated tall claims on his CV.
The interviews of 17 candidates were all rushed in a single day, and a single field expert was deemed sufficient for examining the technical prowess of candidates from wide-ranging fields. Because of this, and a number of other shortcomings pointed out in the judgement, the Court found the appointment process falling short of the required legal standards. The judgement also took note of a number of serious corruption allegations levelled against Sadiq. The Court observed that the allegations were worthy of a serious investigation, and has directed NAB to submit a report to the Court in this regard, within a period of 45 days.