The Hasba bill (Urdu: حسبہ قانون; accountability bill) was a bill proposed by members of the provincial assembly of the North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan, which borders Afghanistan. The political party in power in the province at that time was the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), which was an alliance of six religious parties endorsing a system of Islamic justice (sharia). In 2003 the Hasba Bill (Sharia implementation Bill) was approved by the same assembly; which mandates sharia in the province. The Hasba bill was intended as a means for overseeing the implementation of sharia (hisbah); hence the name of the bill.
The Hasba bill was blocked by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry declared it to be unconstitutional. The then Attorney General Makhdoom Ali Khan appeared on behalf of the President of Pakistan who challenged the bill using his powers as Referring Authority.
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“Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)