ISLAMABAD: An oil marketing company (OMC) Wednesday filed an intra-court appeal (ICA) in the Islamabad High Court (IHC), challenging its verdict, wherein it had rejected a petition against the newly-formed fuel crisis committee.
The OMC, Attock Petroleum Limited, in its ICA requested the court to set aside the verdict of a single bench of IHC in that matter and the Ministry of Petroleum's June 8th and 9th notifications, announcing governmental actions against the OMCs.
In the ICA, the petitioner OMC contended that although notices had been issued in the petition to the respondents for their response but without taking any written response, the court proceeded to dispose of the petition.
It added that the main contention before the judge in chamber was that the impugned notifications were without lawful authority and clearly illegal.
"The learned AAC was repeatedly asked under what authority the Respondent No 1 had issued the impugned notifications, which the learned AAG failed to answer," maintained the ICA. It further said that an order from the Sindh High Court (SHC) passed in a similar case was also read out and shown, in which similar question had been put to the AAG, and the AAG after having read out the impugned notifications, was unable to substantiate as to how and under what provision of law, these notifications were issued, and the SHC restrained the fuel crisis committee from taking any coercive action against the plaintiffs.
A single bench of IHC Chief Justice Athar Minallah in its verdict noted that in case of the petitions in hand, a mere fact finding inquiry/probe is being conducted by the concerned executive authorities to identify the factors, which have led to acute fuel shortages by exposing the general public to extreme inconvenience and hardship.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020