PESHAWAR, Jan 30: The NWFP Flour Mills Association challenged in the Peshawar High Court on Tuesday the Punjab government’s constitutional authority to grant subsidy on wheat.

In a writ seeking a uniform price for wheat throughout the country, the association described Punjab’s “Ramazan Package” as mere eyewash and a stab in the back of federalism.

The petitioner stated that in ‘apparent Islamic philanthropy’ Punjab had subsidised wheat to Rs700 per 100kg creating a gap of Rs160 in the official prices of the essential commodity in the two provinces.

The move, it complained, allowed the flour mills of Punjab to “misuse inter-provincial trade to dump the market in the NWFP’ inflicting huge losses on counterparts by forcing total closure of the milling operations. The petitioner has prayed the court that the quality control of flour should exclusively rest with the federation and, any restriction imposed by any province on the milling operation seeking substandard flour should be declared unconstitutional.

The petitioner claimed that with a membership of 169 mills, the association represented the biggest industrial trade group of the NWFP with total investments exceeding Rs6 billion. In addition to its registered members, another 80 new flour mills commissioned in the NWFP have suspended operations, laying-off a work force exceeding 30,000.

The petitioner claimed that the Ramazan Package was in fact prompted by Passco’s attempts to dispose of her stocks by undercutting the Punjab price. It warned that close connivance between Punjab’s bureaucracy and industrialists was undermining the inter-provincial “tranquillity” and threatening to disrupt the economic life of Pakistan by ignoring the prescribed constitutional caution in Article 149(4).

The petitioner stated that the farmers in Punjab and the mill owners and consumers in the NWFP were victims of the Federal Wheat Policy which was held hostage by the mafia in Lahore.

The petition has raised the question whether any ‘essential commodity’, as mentioned in Article 151(4), can be varyingly priced in different parts of Pakistan. And if so, why did the federal government announce a single support price for wheat. It also questions the right of any province to restrict the outflow of any commodity while it is promoting the trade of its products.