KOHAT, Feb 4: A 36-member committee headed by MPA Shad Mohammad Khan will file a constitutional petition in the Peshawar High Court for supply of natural gas from local wells on a priority basis.

The decision was taken at a meeting organised by former law minister Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah Gilani. The meeting was also attended by district nazim Gohar Saifullah, nazims of union councils and a number of councillors.

The meeting was informed that despite public announcements made by President Gen Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz’s public declarations about provision of natural gas all across the country by 2008, no work had been initiated in the NWFP from where the gas would be supplied.

Members of the meeting said that it was unfortunate that many areas in Kohat, Karak and Hangu districts were still deprived of natural gas despite the fact that huge reserves had been discovered there. They pointed out that a pipeline had been laid from the local gas fields up up to Dera Ismail Khan through which gas will supplied to southern Punjab while another one connected the gas field to the national grid via Attock, the prime minister’s constituency.

Members of the meeting said that commercial supply from Kohat to Punjab had begun three years ago while Gurguri gas field had been supplying gas to Punjab for more than a year. They said that development in the province was being ignored which tantamount to usurping people’s constitutional and legal rights.

According to a report that was read out in the meeting, the daily output of the local gas fields was 300 million million cubic-foot (mmcft) while the southern districts of the NWFP needed only 130 mmcft. They said that it was the right of the people of the province to first benefit from its natural resource. They feared that the federal government was trying to create yet another complicated issue involving royalty and supply just like the issue of net hydel profit.

The meeting tasked the committee to prepare and present a case before the federal government while Syed Iftikhar Hussain Gilani would file a case in the Peshawar High Court within 15 days.