LHC maintains status quo on Sharifs’ mills

Petitioners claimed that respondents were planning to establish new sugar mills under the garb of ‘relocation’

LAHORE: A division bench of the Lahore High Court has maintained the status quo in the matter of shifting five sugar mills owned by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and their relatives.

The bench, headed by Justice Abid Aziz Sheikh, passed the order on intra-court appeals filed by Haseeb Waqas and other sugar mills. It, however, did not suspend the decision of a single bench of the LHC that stopped five of their sugar mills from relocating to new locations.



On October 10, a single bench headed by Justice Ayesha A Malik declared illegal the relocation of Chaudhry Sugar Mills, Ittefaq Sugar Mills in Sahiwal, Haseeb Waqas Sugar Mills in Nankana Sahib, Abdullah (Yousaf) Sugar Mills in Sargodha and Abdullah Sugar Mills in Depalpur to other districts.

JDW Sugar Mills of PTI secretary-general Jahangir Khan Tareen and the owners of Indus Sugar Mills and RYK Sugar Mills, among others, had filed a petition on December 6, 2006, challenging the Sharif families’ plan to relocate the five sugar mills.



The petitioners alleged that the respondents were planning to establish new sugar mills under the garb of ‘relocation’.

Hearing the appeals against the single bench’s decision, Justice Sheikh ordered that the status quo be maintained with regard to production of the ‘shifted’ sugar mills that had not started production yet.

The hearing was adjourned till November 2.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 29^th, 2016.