HYDERABAD: Sindh High Court’s Hyderabad circuit bench comprising Justice Mohammad Saleem Jaiser and Justice Khadim Hussain Tunio on Thursday issued notices to the federal ministry of petroleum and natural resources, Sindh energy secretary and others for June 12 on a petition seeking representation of an MNA and four UC chairmen in the Petroleum Social Development Committee (PSDC) for Sanghar district.

The petitioners — MNA Saira Bano (elected on a reserved seat) and UC chairmen Munawwar Iqbal, Rehmat Ali, Azhar Rasool and Bashir Ahmed, all belonging to the Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) — are represented by Advocate Ishrat Lohar in the case. According to them, the Sindh government had notified the PSDC for all districts of the province in 2017.

Deputy commissioners are to serve as secretaries of their respective committees. The chief minister is the competent authority to nominate anyone as chairman of the district PSDCs. In exercise of his powers, he appointed Senator Imamuddin Shauqeen from the ruling party as chairman of Sang­har district’s committee on Feb 4, 2019.

They cited the guidelines for the PSDC and stated that the committee was supposed to plan development schemes and execute the works on the basis of royalty of the natural resour­ces within its area.

The petition noted that under the said notification, all elected members of the National and Sindh assemblies, including those elected on reserved seats as well as elected UC chairmen of the area where natural resources were explored and royalty was recovered, were to be inducted in the committee concerned.

MNA Saira Bano stated that she belonged to the GDA and had submitted an application with the Sanghar DC to seek her representation in the district’s committee so that she could give her input on development works to be planned for her area.

The chairmen of Shah Murad, Shah Mardan, Sinjhoro and UC-10 (Sinj­horo) also submitted identical applications to the Sanghar DC.

However, neither the MNA nor the UC chairmen received any response from the DC, the petitioners complained.

The petitioners informed court that the DC had sought proposals from people of the area regarding the deve­lop­ment works to be executed by San­ghar district committee.

They said natural resources were being explored in their areas but they were not being called to the meetings of the committee.

They said three such meetings had already been held in March and April.

The petitioners prayed to court to restrain the respondents from holding further meetings of the committee without the petitioners’ participation.

Published in Dawn, May 10th, 2019