A writ petition filed in Islamabad High Court on Saturday questioned the appointments of chairman and three members of National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra). Sharafat Ali Chaudhry filed a writ petition under Article 199 of Constitution making the Federation of Pakistan through secretary Cabinet Division, secretary Establishment Division, secretary Ministry of Water and Power, principal secretary to the prime minister, chairman Nepra, three members of the NEPRA, and chief secretaries of all provinces respondents.
He alleged that appointments of Chairman Nepra Tariq Saddozai, Member Consumers Affairs Major Haroon Rashid (Retd), Member Monitoring & Enforcement Himayatullah Khan and Member Licensing Syed Masoodul Hassan Naqvi are illegal and contrary to Section 3(3) of Regulation of Generation, Transmission and Distribution of Electric Power Act, 1997.
The Section 3 (3) of the Act stipulates: "The chairman shall be an eminent professional of known integrity and competence with at least 20 years of related experience in law, business, engineering, finance, accounting, economics, or the power industry."
The petition, which is likely to come up for hearing on March 13, claimed that the chairman and the three members of Nepra not only lack requisite qualifications for slots, but legal process was also not adopted during their appointment.
Seeking the court''s directives for appointing authorities of the chairman and three members of Nepra, Munawar Iqbal Duggal, the counsel for the petitioner, prayed the court to declare the appointments illegal. Duggal also prayed the court to declare the slots of the chairman and the three members vacant with directives to the concerned authorities to fill in the slots in accordance with the prescribed selection procedure and law in a fair, transparent and competitive manner at the earliest.