A division bench of Peshawar High Court comprising Justice Nisar Hussain Khan and Justice Mussarat Hilali issued a stay order on the amalgamation of All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) of KP Zone with Punjab Zone as one Northern Zone of the association.
The bench also issued notices to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, APTMA, Regulator, Trade Organisation, Deputy Director Trade Organisation to file replies on a writ petition filed by 10 leading textile mills challenging the 'forced' and 'monopolistic' amalgamation of APTMA KP Zone with APTMA Punjab Zone as one Northern Zone. The petition was filed by Chairman APTMA KP Zone, Raza Kuli Khan Khattak and other members of the Association.
Athar Minallah, the counsel for the petitioners, contented that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Zone pertaining to a well-defined and constitutionally recognised area has its own dynamics, problems, solutions and requirements, etc, which are very different from other zones, regions and areas requiring separate and distinct representation in any Federal/'All Pakistan' association or body.
By merging the KP Zone into "Northern Zone" the voice and representation of the province has effectively and practically been killed or silenced. Punjab being a big province itself needed to be divided into zones let alone merging other provinces into one zone with it. The creation of Northern Zone defeats the purposes of the Act: in that instead of providing appropriate representation to the members of KP Zone it takes away the already existing representation available earlier.
The re-zoning has been done in the most discriminatory manner as only the KP zone has been eliminated. Under the existing memorandum and Articles of APTMA, the office of chairman of the association shall rotate between the zones in the proportion of 3:2:1 (three for Punjab Zone, two for Sindh Balochistan Zone and one for KP Zone) formula, respectively; but under the proposed Memorandum and Articles of APTMA, KP zone has been merged with Punjab zone into one northern zone purportedly under the Trade Organisation Rules 2013. This effectively would mean the representative zone of KP would have been silenced and identity of KP zone would have been lost.
The bench after hearing the arguments, granted a status quo order and issued notices to Government of Pakistan through Secretary, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, APTMA through its Chairman, Regulator of Trade Organisation and Deputy Director Trade Organisation and, therefore, stayed the Extra Ordinary General Body Meeting of APTMA members scheduled on March 13, 2014, (Thursday) with the agenda point of changing the Memorandum and Articles of APTMA.
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