Islamabad - The Islamabad High Court (IHC) will resume the hearing on a petition moved against the closure of gas supply to the CNG stations for three months here today (Friday).
A single bench of IHC comprising Justice Athar Minallah will conduct the hearing of the petitions filed by the owners of CNG stations of Potohar region. Previously, the same bench had directed the Ministry of Petroleum to formulate a policy of indiscriminate gas supply to all sectors, including CNG sector.
Justice Athar had directed both the parties that the apprehensions of CNG sector should be reviewed in the meeting between secretary Ministry of Petroleum and representative delegation of the CNG stations so that a comprehensive and indiscriminate policy could be formulated regarding the indiscriminate supply of gas to all sectors.
The petitioners have adopted before the court that the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources has been treating CNG sector in a discriminating way when they had been providing gas to the other industrial sector sane CNG.
They said that this discrimination is not only unconstitutional but a violation of fundamental rights. It was on December 04 when the same IHC bench while directing SNGPL not to disconnect the connections of 314 CNG gas stations, had sought reply from the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources.
Counsels for SNGPL Ali Rukh and Hafeezullah Yaqoob on the other hand had informed the court that the prevalent situation is due to a huge gap in demand and supply.
The SNGPL has a priority list and the first priority is domestic consumer.
They said that under the contract the CNG station owners signed while applying for the gas connections, the SNGPL has the right to interrupt the supply of gas to them at any point of time.
The counsels said that the gas load-management issue has already been discussed by IHC Justice Riaz Ahmed Khan in 2011 on the identical petitions.