ISLAMABAD: Even as fuel stocks dwindled in the wake of a week-long petrol crisis, Railway Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique said that the shortage had not affected the Pakistan Railways (PR) since it had enough stocks to last 17 days.

“The entire railways system runs on diesel, which is available in ample quantity. Besides, the department has expanded its storage capacity to 17 days,” the minister told reporters outside the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

He claimed that when he took office, the department had a fuel storage capacity of only one day, which was first expanded to 14 days and now stands at 17.

The minister also said that Pakistan Railways had parked its oil wagons in Karachi, which had a capacity to transport 5,000 tons of furnace oil for power generation on a daily basis from Karachi to Mehmoodkot, near Multan, where the country’s biggest oil refinery is located.

The minister had come to court to attend proceedings conducted by a two-judge Supreme Court bench, headed by Justice Mian Saqib Nisar. The bench had taken up a joint petition, filed by former state minister for Railways Ishaq Khakwani and PPP founding member Dr Mubashar Hassan, during the Musharraf regime.

The matter concerned the lease of 141 acres of Railways land to Messers Maxcorp Husnain Pvt Ltd in a non-transparent manner and in violation of settled principles, to develop the Rs50 billion private Royal Palm Golf and Country Club in Lahore. The petition was filed in Jan 2011.

In 2004, then-Railways secretary Shakeel Durrani had disclosed the scam before a sub-committee of the Public Accounts Committee of the National Assembly, headed by Malik Allahyar.

The previous government took the matter seriously and a 20-member special committee was set up by then-National Assembly Speaker Dr Fehmida Mirza with Nazar Afzal Chandio as its chairman. The committee completed and submitted its report on Aug 26, 2010. The report suggested that the properties of those involved in the scam should be auctioned to offset the losses incurred.

On Wednesday, Advocate Miangul Hassan Aurengzeb, representing the Pakistan Railways, rejected the proposal put forward by the counsel for Royal Palm, Barrister Ali Zafar, that Railways would be given a 50 per cent share of its profits with retrospective effect, instead of the existing 10 per cent in terms of revenue-sharing, commitment charges and land usage charges.

But the court asked Mr Khakwani to submit counter-proposals within 15 days, which should also be shared with the other parties as well. The court also wondered why the government was shying away from terminating the lease and observed that Railways reserved the right to take over the property.

The court also asked Mr Khakwani to come up with an estimate, suggesting how much Railways could have earned in an open auction had the land been leased out in a fair manner.

Ali Zafar argued that throughout the period of the contract, the accounts of the club had been audited by a leading chartered accountancy firms, Messers A.F. Ferguson and Co.

Referring to the jurisdiction of the court to examine the terms of contract, the counsel argued that this was not the case of enforcement of any fundamental rights of public importance as the contract was a commercial contract executed between independent parties and in case of a dispute regarding its validity, the only recourse available to the Railways was to refer it to arbitration.

Published in Dawn January 22nd , 2015

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