The Supreme Court on Thursday said that it will hear the gas infrastructure development cess (GIDC) case on daily basis from October 22 and no adjournment would be allowed.
At the onset of the hearing, assistant of Khalid Anwar informed the court that senior counsel is not feeling well, therefore, he could not attend that day's (Thursday) proceedings. He also stated that as Khalid Anwar is on general adjournment until 18th October; therefore, the case be fixed after this date.
A three-member special bench, headed by Justice Mushir Alam, accepting his request adjourned the case until October 22. However, the bench made it clear that on the next date no adjournment will be granted and if the lead counsel of any party is not present then his junior would have to argue the case. The bench also directed the petitioners' lawyers to come prepared on the next date.
Khalid Anwar is representing Rahman Cotton Mills Limited, Janana De Malucho Textile Mills and others mills. There are 107 petitions/appeals of various textile mills, cotton mills, sugar mills, ceramics companies, chemicals, CNG filing stations, match factories, cement companies and aluminum industries regarding GIDC levy are pending before the apex court.
The Peshawar High Court (PHC) on May 31, 2017 had rejected a set of petitions challenging the validity of the GIDC Act 2015 on the 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 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 Iran-Pakistan Gas Pipeline project, Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) Gas 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 August 22, 2014 verdict and clarified that the collection of then over Rs 100 billion under GIDC Act was not liable to be refunded to the industrial consumers of gas from whom they had been 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 last promulgated 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 government withdrew the ordinance on September 6.
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