ISLAMABAD: Chief Justice of Pakistan Umar Ata Bandial on Monday observed during hearing of a Jamaat-i-Islami petition challenging the 2005 privatisation of K-Electric that the Supreme Court would not interfere in economic policies of the country since the court lacks expe­rtise on financial matters.

CJP Bandial asked senior counsel Rasheed A. Razvi and Salahuddin Ahmed representing Jamaat-i-Islami to appro­ach the relevant high court if they wanted to.

The court asked the counsel to get fresh instr­uctions and adjourned further proceedings for Tues­day since the bench will not be available next week.

Later, Salahuddin Ahmed told Dawn that the petitioner had sought a direction from the court either the privatisation of the electricity utility of Karachi be reversed or at least buyers of the entity be compelled to fulfil the commitment they had made at the time of the purchase of the power utility.

The petition said that the privatisation of the K-Electric had allegedly been done in a wrongful manner since it was sold at a steep discount and there were several procedural irregularities in the bidding process.

More importantly, the petition argued, even the commitments made by the buyers after the disinvestment of the entity, were not fulfilled.

To substantiate the claim, the petitioner said that the buyers had to invest $361 million in the infrastructure of the power utility, but they did not make the requisite investments.

Published in Dawn, June 6th, 2023