Price fixing: SHC stops authorities from taking action against sugar mill owners
A division bench, headed by Chief Justice Maqbool Baqar, passed this direction on the plea of sugar mill owners, who had gone to the court against authorities for threatening and pressuring them to initiate the crushing season without the determination of sugarcane prices.
The mill owners told the two judges that they have already challenged Section 16 of the Sugar Factories Control Act, 1950, and the issuance of any official notification to fix sugar prices by government functionaries in pursuance of this law.
According to them, "Section 16 of the Act is oppressive, unworkable, onerous, unreasonable and discriminatory", as it confers complete power of determining minimum prices of sugarcane on the executive, which inevitably exercises its power arbitrarily.
They complained that the court had, on November 5, issued notices to the federal and provincial authorities to submit their comments, explaining the powers of the executive to fix sugarcane prices. Meanwhile, they said, the officials were forcing them to kick off sugarcane crushing at their mills despite the fact that the controversy regarding the sugarcane's price determination has not been settled. The court was pleaded to stop the officials and their employees from harassing the petitioners.
Issuing notices to the relevant authorities, the two judges ordered: "No coercive action shall be initiated against the petitioners' mills for not commencing crushing by November 19, on which date the response to the constitutional petition shall also be placed before this court."
Published in The Express Tribune, November 15th, 2014.
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