LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) has sought a response by September 15 in a case challenging electricity and gas load-shedding, as the petitioners urged the court to hear the matter on merit rather than on the question of an unpaid fine.
The case came up before the court in the form of an intra-court appeal against a single-bench decision.
During the hearing, the court asked whether the intra-court appeal against the single bench’s decision had been filed within the prescribed time. Counsel Azhar Siddique replied that the appeal had been filed on time, within 20 days.
Azhar Siddique informed the court that a fine of Rs100,000 had not been paid, arguing that depositing it would amount to accepting the earlier decision under challenge.
The counsel pleaded that payment of the fine should not be made a condition for hearing the appeal. Load-shedding, he argued, was not a personal matter but an issue of the fundamental rights of tens of millions of people.
Azhar Siddique told the court that load-shedding was hurting the public, children, businesses and industry, and that the court could summon the relevant records to review the load-shedding situation.
The Judicial Activism Panel, the petitioner in the case, requested that the case be heard on merit. The court then sought a reply on the matter by September 15.
The Judicial Activism Panel, led by Azhar Siddique, is a regular filer of public interest petitions before the Lahore High Court on issues ranging from governance to utilities and prices, and has often sought court intervention on matters affecting consumers at large.
Under the Law Reforms Ordinance, 1972, an order passed by a single judge of a high court in its constitutional (writ) jurisdiction can be challenged through an intra-court appeal before a larger bench of the same court, subject to a limitation period. Whether an appeal is within time, and whether any conditions imposed by the earlier order must be met first, are threshold questions a bench typically settles before examining the substance of a case.
The petitioners are relying on the argument that load-shedding touches on fundamental rights. Pakistan’s superior courts have, since the Supreme Court’s 1994 Shehla Zia judgment, interpreted the right to life under Article 9 of the Constitution broadly, extending it to matters that affect the quality of life, a line of reasoning public interest litigants have invoked in cases involving utilities.
The case comes during a difficult summer for consumers. Lahore has faced a shortfall of around 1,000MW amid unannounced load-shedding, with night-time demand touching 5,200MW. The Punjab Assembly unanimously passed a resolution against unannounced load-shedding last month, while households in several neighbourhoods say they are squeezed by missing Sui gas and unaffordable LPG cylinders.
The high court has also been dealing with other power sector disputes, including a recent stay on a Rs60 billion compensation order against LESCO.
When the matter returns on September 15, the bench is expected to take up the replies. If the preliminary objections are settled in the petitioners’ favour, the court could proceed to examine the load-shedding situation itself, including records from the power and gas utilities that the petitioners want summoned.
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