A three-member special bench of the Supreme Court will start hearing 107 pending petitions regarding Gas Infrastructure Development Cess (GIDC) levy from September 19. The bench headed by Justice Mushir Alam and comprising Justice Faisal Arab and Justice Mansoor Ali Shah will take the cases of textile mills, cotton mills, sugar mills, ceramics companies, chemicals, CNG filling stations, match factories, cement companies and aluminum industries , which have been pending since 2017.
The Peshawar High Court (PHC) on May 31, 2017 had rejected a set of petitions challenging the validity of the GIDC Act 2015 on grounds that the transgression of legislative authority by the federation does not qualify as a breach of fundamental rights of citizens and therefore the petitioners before the high court were not aggrieved persons within the meaning of Article 199 of the Constitution and thus have no locus standi to challenge the validity of the act.
The PHC in its judgement had also held that when Article 142 (a) was read with Article 154 of the Constitution, it became evident that the Parliament had the exclusive authority to legislate on Entries in Part II of the Federal Legislative List of the Constitution.
Earlier, the GIDC Act was approved by the National Assembly in December 2011 imposing cess on gas consumers, other than the domestic sector, to develop infrastructure for a number of projects including the Iran-Pakistan Pipeline Project, Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) Pipeline Project and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project and for price equalization of imported alternative fuels including LPG (liquefied petroleum gas).
In April 15, 2015, the apex court rejected the federal government's petition seeking review of its Aug 22, 2014 verdict and clarified that the collection of the then over Rs 100 billion under the GIDC Act was not liable to be refunded to the industrial consumers of gas from whom it was recovered. The then GIDC law had legalized the cess recovery from the non-domestic consumers, mainly industries.
Later, on the expiry of the GIDC Ordinance, the National Assembly and Senate passed the GIDC Act 2015 and repealed the GIDC Act 2011. The GIDC controversy gained attention when the government on 28th August promulgated the GIDC (Amendment) Ordinance 2019 with an offer to grant Rs 210 billion financial amnesty to big businesses including fertilizer, general industry, power generation companies, K-Electric and CNG sector. However, due to the pressure of opposition parities and media, the ordinance was withdrawn on September 6.
Attorney General for Pakistan Anwar Mansoor Khan on September 6 on behalf of the federal government had filed an application before the apex court stating that the cases relating to the GIDC Act 2015 involved huge sums of government revenue. It stated the matter has been pending since 2017 and petitions had been filed against the PHC judgement.
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