October 01, 2008	Wednesday	Shawwal 1, 1429

KARACHI, Sept 30: A Sindh High Court division bench headed by its chief justice issued notices to the federation and the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) for October 16 in a writ petition moved by the province of Sindh against ‘discriminatory’ power tariffs.

Notices in an application for suspension of the operation of the impugned tariff notification of March 1, 2008, were also issued to the respondents for October 16. Advocate-General Mohammad Yusuf Leghari, assisted by Assistant Advocate-General Adnan Karim Memon, made preliminary submissions as the bench consisting of Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali and Justice Zafar Ahmad Khan Sherwani took up the petition.

The Hyderabad Electricity Supply Company, which supplies electric power to the province excluding Karachi and had been blamed by the Nepra for high tariffs caused by its inefficient working, had also been cited as a respondent and the bench ordered that notices be issued to the Hesco both in the main petition and in the stay application.

According to the petition, the rates prescribed by the Nepra for the Hesco are 42 per cent higher than those of the Faisalabad Electricity Supply Company and 45 per cent higher than those of the Lahore Electricity Supply Company.

The matter was first taken up by the chief minister with the prime minister but the Nepra informed the PM’s secretariat that the main reasons for higher tariff rates were the transmission and distribution losses incurred by the Hesco and the company’s poor recovery rate.

Recalling a Sindh Assembly resolution of September 1, 2008, the petition says that the petitioner province is in no way responsible for the transmission losses and the consequential high production cost of the Hesco. The common man should not be penalized for the company’s incompetence.

Without prejudice, it says, the tariff notification is not only repugnant to the equality clauses contained in Articles 3, 4 and 25 of the Constitution but is also at variance with the provisions of the Regulation, Generation, Transmission, and Distribution of Electric Power Act, 1997, which requires the Nepra to protect the interest of consumers.

Justice Qaiser Iqbal of the Sindh High Court on Tuesday suspended the conviction of a prisoner facing trial in a murder case and granted him bail in the sum of Rs100,000, adds PPI.

Appellant Mohammad Arif challenged the conviction order passed by the assistant district and sessions judge-I, east, on Oct 24, 2005, awarding him 10-year rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs1 million for killing a man during a robbery in the Aziz Bhatti police limits in 1998.

His counsel, Abdul Razzak, stated that the appellant was produced in an identification parade after three months of the incident, but the police gave no explanation for the delay. Moreover, a co-accused in the same case was granted bail by suspending his conviction. He prayed to the court to extend the same facility to his client.

The prosecution counsel contended that he had also appeared in the criminal appeal of the co-accused, when the conviction judgment was suspended and he was bailed out.

Justice Qaiser Iqbal, in view of the circumstances, suspended the applicant’s conviction order and granted him bail subject to furnishing a surety in sum of Rs100,000 to the satisfaction of the nazir of the court.