LAHORE, Jan 18: The Lahore High Court (LHC) directed the Punjab Food Department on Friday to distribute wheat to mills according to their quota without any discrimination.

Justice Syed Hamid Ali Shah said: “If the Food Department faces shortage of wheat, it should maintain balance while distributing wheat to the mills.”

The judge ordered this while disposing of petitions by 17 newly-established mills, which accused the department of ignoring them in wheat supply.

Petitioner mills included Ibrahim, Gorjani, Malik, Wasif, Sona, Al Mumtaz, Vehari, Tufail, Hasnat, Shan, Al Ghani, Mubarik, Ali, Pak Millat and Chishtian.

Petitioner counsels Ramzan Chaudhry and Shahzad Shaukat said the department through a notification on Nov 31, 2007, introduced a new policy which was different from the previous one. Under the policy, the petitioners were excluded from the list of those mills which were to get wheat quota.

They said the department had distributed wheat to their favourite flourmills and deprived the petitioners of their right.

The Food Department director submitted a report showing shortage of wheat in the province. He said as soon as the wheat crisis ended, the petitioners would get wheat as per their quota.

The director said the department had discriminated against any mill.

However, the counsel produced documentary evidence showing the wheat distribution among some flourmills run by bigwigs, including New Hussain Flour Mills (Jhelum), Dareshak Flourmills (Dera Ghazi Khan), Iqbal Brothers (Jhang), Mohkam Flourmills (Bahawalpur) and Haris Flourmills (Bahawalpur).

Justice Hamid while admitting an argument of the counsels observed that the flour mills meeting the criteria of the department could not be deprived of the wheat supply as per the governing law.