KARACHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed all the stakeholders to come up with a doable suggestion by Friday on how to pay the electricity dues the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) owes K-Electric.

The KMC approached the SC seeking to restrain the KE from disconnecting power supply to its offices over non-payment of dues after the Sindh High Court had dismissed an identical plea of the city’s municipal administration.

When the matter came up for hearing before a two-judge bench comprising Justices Maqbool Baqar and Sajjad Ali Shah at the Supreme Court’s Karachi Registry, Mayor Wasim Akhtar, representatives of the KE and officials of the provincial government appeared before the court.

Justice Baqar remarked that Karachi was the leading revenue generating city and asked if the electricity bills’ payment had become a big issue. Apparently, there was only the issue of will and to take responsibility, he added.

Rape suspect runs away from courtroom

Both the provincial and city governments were complaining of a shortage of funds as the mayor said that they were facing an acute shortage of funds while a provincial law officer contended that the government was also facing scarcity of cash.

The bench said that the situation of funds was not as bad as was being described by the provincial government representatives. When Justice Shah asked the mayor that who was using the revenue being generated by the district municipal corporations, Mr Akhtar replied that the revenue of all the DMCs went to the Sindh government.

While responding to a question of the bench, a provincial law officer argued that the government was providing reconciled funds to the local government.

The lawyer for the power utility submitted that the bills of 72 power connections, provided to the city government, had not been paid, adding that electricity dues owed by the KMC exceeded Rs580 million.

The bench directed all the stakeholders to sit together and come up with a doable plan or suggestion by Friday.

Earlier, the KMC had petitioned the SHC after the KE had disconnected power supply to one of its parks for non-payment of dues. However, the high court had dismissed the plea of the KMC in January and told it to pay the dues. Thereafter, the KMC approached the SC as it said that the power utility also disconnected power supply to its head office and other offices for non-payment of dues.

Rape suspect escapes

The same bench on Wednesday dismissed the pre-arrest bail application of a suspect in a case pertaining to the rape of a 12-year-old girl.

The suspect managed to escape shortly after the dismissal of his bail as police failed to arrest him.

The bench expressed resentment after it was informed that the samples for DNA were collected after a delay of 22 days.

The prosecutor said that the incident took place in Umerkot on Feb 14 as the applicant with his accomplice took away the minor girl from the chilli fields, where she was working, and subjected her to criminal assault.

Published in Dawn, April 11th, 2019