The federal government has refused to allocate subsidy to electricity consumers in the review petition it submitted on Tuesday against the Supreme Court’s December 9, 2013 judgment in the power outages case.
It also raised the possibility of withdrawing subsidies from the education and health sectors if the top court insisted on accommodating power consumers.
The government stated that the subsidy amount was being spent on power projects to overcome the chronic problem of load shedding in the country. The government also admitted that the subsidy has been withdrawn under pressure from international monetary institutions.
Hearing the review petition against its verdict, a three-judge bench, headed by Justice Jawwad S Khawaja, sought the details of subsidy which has been allocated for power consumers as well as payable circular debt to the power generation companies. The bench issued notices to the incumbent attorney general as well as his predecessor Munir A Malik to assist the court in the case.
Justice Khawaja asked the government to tell the court whether it had any understanding with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank about not granting a subsidy to power consumers. New Delhi has rejected the IMF’s conditions over the allocation of subsidy for power consumers, he added.
Justice Dost Mohammad pointed out that the oil stock in the country has nothing to do with the increase in international prices.
During the hearing, counsel for the government Sardar Ijaz Ishaq said that circular debt had piled up due to the power subsidy.
The bench, however, stated that circular debt could not be cleared through cosmetic measures and instead of putting burden on consumers who pay their bills, the government should take action against those who were involved in power theft.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 24th, 2014.
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