PESHAWAR: PHC calls for comments from Punjab, Centre: Disparity in wheat prices
Bureau Report
PESHAWAR, Jan 31: A division bench of the Peshawar High Court on Thursday sought comments within a fortnight from the federal, Punjab and NWFP governments in a constitutional petition filed by the Pakistan Flour Mills Association, challenging disparity in wheat prices in the two provinces.
The court took up for preliminary hearing the petition and directed the federal, the Punjab and Frontier governments to respond to a variety of allegations about their share in the prevailing inter-provincial imbalance.
The disparity is primarily blamed on a provincial subsidy by Punjab that stretched the price gap during Ramazan to a record Rs160 for every 100 kilogram. Resultantly, more than 250 flour mills in the NWFP were pushed out of the market and forced to lay off a work force of more than 30,000.
The key constitutional question raised in the petition is whether the Punjab government was authorized to grant any subsidy. The petitioner claimed that the subsidy was introduced by the then chief minister of Punjab, Mian Shehbaz Sharif, which was continuing without minding its fallout on inter-provincial relations.
Pleading for the association, Shahid Orakzai insisted that comments must be sought from the Punjab government if the court had to rule the primary question.
The bench observed that comments from Lahore could cause a possible delay.
The petitioner invited the court’s attention to the time factor in context of the new crop and expressed the apprehension that the local industry could suffer irrecoverable loss if the situation was allowed to persist till the harvest, barely about 75 days away.
The court assured that it would prefer to rule on the petition before that period but said that respondents must be given adequate time to file their comments on the legal and constitutional questions raised in the petition.
The petitioner underlined the importance of what he called as “equality of food” in the unity of a family or house-hold. “Discrimination on the dining table can split a family faster than any other cause,” the petitioner added.
