ISLAMABAD, Sept 8: The federal government on Friday filed a review petition in the Supreme Court requesting it to set aside its judgment of annulling the controversial sale of the Pakistan Steel Mills to a three-party consortium.

“The federal government, Privatisation Commission and the Pakistan Steel Mills have submitted a review petition with a request to grant two more weeks to file complete paper books,” Advocate on Record Mehr Khan Malik told Dawn.

Later in the evening, Privatisation Commission Minister Zahid Hamid officially announced the submission of the review petition at the PID Auditorium here, stating that nine grounds had been taken in the petition against the Aug 8 judgment of the apex court.

After the judgment, the deal with the three-member consortium stood revoked and the government had returned the earnest money and the first instalment to them, he said.

In the review petition, filed under Article 188 of the constitution, the court has been prayed to review, recall and set aside its detailed judgment of Aug 8 in which the court had held that the entire disinvestment process of the steel mills reflected “indecent” haste, ignoring profitability aspect and assets of the mills by the financial adviser before its evaluation.

According to Supreme Court rules, the same number of judges would sit to review its earlier decision in which the presence of the author judge (in this case Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry) is mandatory. The same panel of lawyers, comprising Sharifuddin Pirzada, Hafeez Pirzada and Waseem Sajjad, will plead the government’s case.

The petitioners contended that the nine-member full bench had incorrectly held that valuation of shares of the PSM had not carried out in accordance with the applicable law. Moreover, they maintained, the apex court had also incorrectly held that certain concessions had been illegally provided by the federal government to the winning bidder after completion of bidding and that the apex court had wrongly arrived at the conclusion that the share-purchase agreement (SPA) was not valid as the assets of the steel mills were being purchased by an entity other than the winning consortium.

In its detailed order, the bench had declared the $362 million transaction with the Russian-Saudi-Pakistan investors null and void, and the March 31 Letter of Acceptance and the April 24 SPA with the bidders scrapped.

On the Cabinet Committee on Privatisation, the 36-page review petition quoted Rule 4.2 of the Privatisation (Modes and Procedure) Rules, 2001, and contended that the committee was required to approve the highest bidder independently.

Since the committee decisions were directory in nature and not mandatory, it said, the judgment was vitiated by errors apparent on the face of the record.

On concessions which the judgment said had been illegally provided to the highest bidder, the review petition said the conclusions were erroneous. It said no concessions had been provided to the winning bidders after the bidding, instead all decisions had been taken prior to the bidding and had been communicated to all bidders.

On Rs10 billion stocks and trade, it explained that like every industrial project, the PSM required a certain amount of raw material and finished goods to be kept in inventory as part of the regular business cycle. In other words, had all the stock in trade been sold off prior to the handing over of management, the PSM would have been forced to shut down which would have disastrous consequences for the mill itself. Therefore, the inventory of the steel mills was a core asset and could not be valued separately. On clearance of loan liability of Rs7.76 billion, the petition said the loan had been cleared not by the federal government but by the steel mills from its won assets.