National Reconciliation Ordinance
presidential ordinance in Pakistan
The National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO; Urdu: قومی مفاہمت فرمان 2007ء) was a controversial ordinance issued by the former President of Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf APML, on 5 October 2007 and former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan founder and chairman of PTI, on 9 May 2023. It granted amnesty to politicians, political workers and bureaucrats who were accused of corruption, and wanted to leave country for their own profit embezzlement, money laundering, murder, and between 1 January 1986, and 12 October 1999, the time between two states of martial law in Pakistan. It was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Pakistan on 16 December 2009, saving the country from political crisis.
Background
The ordinance aimed at "promoting national reconciliation, fostering mutual trust and confidence amongst holders of public office and removing the vestiges of political vendetta and victimization, and to make the election process more transparent". The NRO states:
Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in sub-section(1), the Federal Government or a Provincial Government may, before the judgment is pronounced by a trial court, withdraw from the prosecution of any person including an absconding accused who is found to be falsely involved for political reasons or through political victimization in any case initiated between 1st day of January, 1986 to 12th day of October, 1999 and upon such withdrawal clause (a) and clause (b) of sub-section (1) shall apply.
It is widely believed that the act was a measure to allow the former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to return to Pakistan without any legal consequences due to pending politically motivated corruption cases. However, Musharraf had said that it was necessary to build a reconciliatory theme in the political arena with the removal of such politically motivated cases. Musharraf stated in an interview that cases had been in the courts for a decade without any judgment being passed and were hampering political progress of virtually all political parties.
According to Transparency International, Pakistan is considered one of the most corrupt countries in the world. For the year 2009 it was ranked 139th out of 180 and had a score of 2.4 on the Corruption Perceptions Index.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “National Reconciliation Ordinance” is presidential ordinance in Pakistan. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through National, Reconciliation and Ordinance, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3355473. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2007, 2023, 1986 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “National Reconciliation Ordinance” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.