ISLAMABAD: Awami Muslim League chief Sheikh Rashid Ahmed on Saturday asked the Supreme Court to disqualify Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi under Articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution by declaring the LNG contracts illegal and unlawful.

Moved by senior lawyer Latif Khosa on behalf of Sheikh Rashid, the petition also pleaded before the court to appoint an honest and impartial person as chairman of the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) to look after the affairs of the institution so that the incumbent prime minister and his predecessor Nawaz Sharif may not intervene in its affairs.

The secretaries of the ministries of petroleum and natural resources and law and justice, the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Ltd, Sui Southern Gas Company, Ogra, the Pakistan State Oil and Elengy Terminal Pakistan have been made respondents in the petition.

Supreme Court moved to declare LNG contracts illegal

In 2013, the PML-N government launched the LNG project and then prime minister Nawaz Sharif in league with then petroleum minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi decided to handle the import and transmission of LNG at Port Qasim through their blue-eyed persons, the petition alleged.

For this purpose, a terminal on rental basis was illegally arranged and Nawaz Sharif’s business friend Hussain Dawood was selected since he owns a terminal in the chemical zone of Port Qasim, the petition contended.

Hussain Dawood also owns Engro Group which is a subsidiary of Dawood Group and Elengy Terminal Pakistan.

As per the rental agreement, the Engro Group / Elengy Terminal was to be paid Rs27.20 million per day irrespective of whether the terminal was used or not and astonishingly the payment of rent was to be made by the Pakistan State Oil without any transparent competitive bidding, the petition alleged.

The petition argued that the sitting prime minister and other respondents by allegedly concealing material facts and misrepresentation before the public at large had committed corrupt and illegal practices and, therefore, should be prosecuted strictly in accordance with the law since the supply of LNG to Qatar Gas had been signed on a long term 15 years basis without adhering to the minimum standards of transparency and customary international terms and conditions.

The petitioner prayed the court to declare the looted and plundered money having been procured by virtue of illegal contracts and should be recovered from the alleged ill gotten assets of the respondents.

Published in Dawn, February 4th, 2018