A three-judge bench of the apex court, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, on Monday postponed the hearing of a suo-motu notice against rental power projects (RPPs) till May 31. Appearing on notice, counsel for Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) sought time to submit replies, which the bench accepted and postponed hearing. Advocate Anwer Kamal and Khwaja Tariq represented Pepco.
On Sunday, the Chief Justice, while taking notice of the RPPs and the hike in power tariff, had issued notices to the head of the Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) as well as the finance and the water and power secretaries.
Last year, the federal government had approved plans to set up rental power projects to generate 1,500 megawatts electricity. In view of the requirement of 2,700MW, the Economic Co-ordination Committee had directed the Water and Power Ministry to arrange 2,200MW from 14 RPPs to eliminate load shedding.
Parliament had also approved the RPPs following a four-day debate on the issue. Water Minister Pervaiz Ashraf had said that the power tariff would rise by six percent after the RPPs started production. In January, leader of PML-Q parliamentary party in National Assembly Faisal Saleh Hayat had urged the Supreme Court to act against rental power projects (RPPs) which, he said, was just another name for corruption.
He said that he had been persistently saying that RPPs had been initiated only for kickbacks; otherwise there was no need for subjecting the masses to untold misery of load shedding. The demand and supply gap of electricity had only been created, and manufactured, by the top guns of the regime to justify the monster of corruption.
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