Chief Justice of Lahore High Court Umar Ata Bandial on Thursday sought a reply from the ministry of water and power in an application questioning discriminatory and unannounced electricity outages in Punjab. The Chief Justice adjourned the hearing till April 11 and ordered that an officer not below the rank of a joint secretary along with officials concerned of the related organisations should personally appear before the court.
The chief justice also sought a report on the action taken by the federal government to defend the decision of the Council of Common Interest (CCI). The government was also asked to submit underlying criteria on which power supply to national grid was allocated in different regions of the country. Chairman of the Judicial Activism Panel Azhar Siddique pleaded that currently, power cuts exceeded 16 hours per day in cities and rural areas faced longer outages in the province.