Public office & public accountability—V Accountability across public office

A common standard of financial disclosure must respect constitutional jurisdictions while ending unjustified institutional secrecy

Accountability becomes an instrument of power when the identity of the officeholder determines whether his financial affairs may be examined. A legislator, a senior civil servant, a judge and a military officer perform different functions. Each can exercise authority with serious consequences for citizens. Those differences require carefully designed procedures; they do not answer the public’s legitimate questions about financial interests and unexplained wealth.

Our earlier published work argued for scrutiny extending across state institutions. Our work on judicial accountability made the same point. Reform must retain that ambition and establish the constitutional routes through which it can be achieved. An ordinary disclosure statute cannot simply confer unlimited jurisdiction on a parliamentary committee.

The Constitution of Islamic Republic of Pakistan supplies both the principle and the limits. Article 19A establishes access to information of public importance, subject to reasonable restrictions imposed by law. Article 14 protects dignity and, subject to law, privacy of the home. Article 10A requires fair trial and due process. A serious reform must give effect to these commitments together, rather than quoting one to erase the others.

Judicial accountability presents a specific boundary. Article 68 of the Constitution restricts parliamentary discussion of the conduct of judges of the Federal Constitutional Court, Supreme Court and High Courts in the discharge of their duties. Article 209 provides the constitutional disciplinary mechanism through the Supreme Judicial Council. A parliamentary verification body should not become a forum in which politicians question judges about their judgments under the pretext of financial scrutiny.

A common disclosure standard for judicial office would need arrangements consistent with judicial independence and the applicable constitutional powers. Relevant complaints and evidence must follow the competent legal route.

Parliament can scrutinise the adequacy of the general framework and seek appropriate institutional reporting without claiming authority to determine an individual judge’s misconduct. Any proposal going beyond those boundaries would require constitutional change, openly debated as such.

Judicial independence is strengthened when financial conflicts can be identified and dealt with credibly. Disclosure and recusal procedures should be clear enough to protect both litigants and judges. Allegations must be assessed on evidence, with a right to respond. Publishing a complaint as though it were an established finding would expose judges to pressure and make the accountability process itself suspect.

Military office also requires precise treatment. The old shorthand of comparing declarations “under the Army Act” leaves important questions unanswered. Which rule or regulation requires the return? What information does it cover? Who verifies it, and what happens when a material discrepancy remains? The 2025 governance diagnostic describes separate arrangements for the armed forces and judiciary, reinforcing the need to identify the actual instruments and close unjustified gaps.

The reform should require the competent defence authorities to identify the applicable disclosure instruments, coverage and verification procedures, and legislate where necessary. It should provide comparable financial information through a lawful channel while protecting operational details. Sending a record to the appropriate service or investigative authority is different from instructing a military court to punish someone. A committee cannot create an offence or jurisdiction by referral.

The constitutional position has also changed since our 2016 proposal. Articles 243 and 248, as amended by the Twenty-seventh Amendment) Act, 2025, now contain protections affecting specified offices and ranks. Their scope must be addressed in designing enforcement. An ordinary statute cannot remove constitutional immunity. A programme promising identical criminal consequences for every officeholder without confronting these provisions would promise something its legislation could not deliver.

Disclosure, conflict management, tax liability, disciplinary responsibility and criminal proceedings must therefore be examined separately. A protection applicable to one process should not casually be expanded into permanent secrecy over every financial interest.

Equally, an accountability campaign cannot disregard a constitutional protection because it regards the protection as undesirable. Where constitutional amendment is required, its need should be stated candidly.

Federalism matters as well. Federal civil-service rules do not automatically govern every provincial employee. The provincial legislatures and governments must enact or apply the corresponding measures within their competence.

A common standard and interoperable records can be achieved through coordinated legislation and agreements, without treating provincial administrations as departments of the federation. Consistency in disclosure should strengthen constitutional government.

Definitions can determine the outcome before verification begins. Definition of the term “service of Pakistan” contained in Article 260 of the Constitution is an exhaustive definition that includes service in the armed forces, but expressly excludes several political and constitutional offices and legislative membership. It reads as under:

“Service of Pakistan” means any service, post or office in connection with the affairs of the Federation or of a Province, and includes an All-Pakistan Service, service in the Armed Forces and any other service declared to be a service of Pakistan by or under Act of Majlis-e-Shoora (Parliament) or of a Provincial Assembly, but does not include service as Speaker, Deputy Speaker, Chairman, Deputy Chairman, Prime Minister, Federal Minister, Minister of State, Chief Minister, Provincial Minister, Attorney-General, Advocate-General, Parliamentary Secretary or Chairman or member of a Law Commission, Chairman or member of the Council of Islamic Ideology, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister, Adviser to the Prime Minister, Special Assistant to Chief Minister, Adviser to a Chief Minister or member of a House or a Provincial Assembly.

A law covering only persons in that service would going to miss some of the very people our proposal is intended to cover. It must separately include elected representatives and the specified public offices. Existing declarations across the service should enter the verification system; the depth of checking and extent of public disclosure can follow proportionate statutory rules. A senior-grade publication threshold should not erase the duty to scrutinise records lawfully filed by others.

Public corporations, regulators and autonomous bodies also need express attention. Coverage should follow the exercise of public authority and control of public resources, with clear thresholds and definitions. Otherwise, moving a function from a department to an entity with a different legal form may move its senior decision-makers outside an accountability rule that was never drafted to include them.

The 2026 civil-service rules recognise the issue by providing for extension or adoption in specified circumstances. Such a mechanism must be implemented lawfully; its existence is not proof that every public entity has already been brought within it. Parliament should require a public coverage map showing who files, to whom, under which instrument and with what verification.

Security arguments deserve serious examination, especially where disclosure could endanger a person or family. The appropriate response is usually to protect sensitive identifiers and locations while preserving information about ownership and financial interests. A request for wider withholding should identify the particular risk, carry reasons, last for a defined period and permit independent review. Institutional prestige is not a security assessment.

Those conducting verification must face the same discipline. Their financial interests should be declared, their appointments transparent and their case allocations insulated from personal intervention. Complaints concerning a verification officer should go to an independent mechanism.

No institution becomes trustworthy merely because its title contains the word accountability. The objective is a system in which every covered public function carries a clear duty to disclose financial interests, every material concern has a lawful route for examination, and every authority reports how it discharged its responsibility.

Citizens should be able to see where the law works and where a constitutional or statutory barrier remains. That visibility is the beginning of equal accountability, and a basis for reforming the barriers that cannot be justified.

[To be continued]

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Huzaima Bukhari, lawyer and author, has been Adjunct Faculty at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), member Advisory Board and Senior Visiting Fellow of Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE). She also served Civil Services of Pakistan from 1984 to 2003.

Dr. Ikramul Haq, Advocate Supreme Court, Adjunct Faculty at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), member Advisory Board and Visiting Senior Fellow of Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), holds an LLD in tax laws. He was full-time journalist from 1979 to 1984 with Viewpoint and Dawn. He also served Civil Services of Pakistan from 1984 to 1996.