The Supreme Court has stopped the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) from investigating alleged irregularities in the Peshawar Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project.
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government had approached the apex court against a ruling by the Peshawar High Court wherein the court had asked NAB to probe the mass transit project over alleged corrupt practices that resulted in massive losses to the national exchequer.
A three-member bench headed by Justice Umar Ata Bandial set aside the decision of the high court, saying it was based on speculations.
According to the petition filed in the high court, the project was transferred to the Peshawar Development Authority despite the formation of a special BRT cell in the provincial transport department that also hired staffers and consultants. The court had observed the project was not coordinated well, resulting in delay and loss of money.
This is not the first time that NAB has been barred from touching the BRT. In 2018, after the PHC asked NAB to probe the BRT project, then chief justice Saqib Nisar had suspended the decision in Sept 2018.
In Feb 2020, an SC bench headed by Justice Bandial had stopped the Federal Investigation Agency to stop the BRT investigation. At this time, the KP government’s lawyer had alleged that the PHC had issued its verdict without any reasoning.
PESHAWAR METRO:
The BRT bus service was launched on Aug 13 last year by Prime Minister Imran Khan after much delay as it missed several deadlines.
The KP government and the project’s execution agency had promised to open the project, launched in October 2017, within six months on April 20, 2018. However, the deadline was missed.
The project managers kept changing the launch dates from May 20 to June 30 to December 31 in 2018 to March 23, 2019, but the project was finally launched in Aug 2020. Since then, multiple buses of the BRT have broken down or caught fire.
