PHC seeks CM’s reply over Peshawar scheme

PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Wednesday issued a notice to the chief minister through his principal secretary directing him to submit reply within two weeks as to why a development scheme of Rs970 million for the provincial capital was dropped from the Annual Development Programme (ADP) for 2015-16.

A two-member bench comprising Chief Justice Yahya Afridi and Justice Ikramullah Khan issued the notice to the chief minister and other respondents.The notice was issued in a writ petition filed by lawmaker Ziaullah Afridi against Chief Minister Pervez Khattak and the provincial government for allegedly dropping the scheme costing Rs970 million.

During the hearing, the petitioner’s lawyer Shumail Ahmad Butt submitted that Peshawar is capital city of the province but the government ignored it in development schemes.

He argued that the present government was even shifting approved funds of development schemes of Peshawar to other districts of the province. He submitted that today residents of Peshawar are even deprived of clean drinking water and were facing various other problems.

The lawyer said that petitioner being elected member of PK-1 constituency had requested the provincial government to include his scheme for the betterment of his area in the name of “Integrated Development Package for Mahal Terai and surrounding areas of Peshawar.”

After acknowledging economic impact, feasibility, cost-benefit analysis and examining it in rigorous process of finalisation of budget, he said the scheme was approved by the cabinet to be included in the ADP. He argued that the scheme was presented for final approval before the provincial assembly during its budget session. Resultantly, he said, the scheme was made part of budget as ADP Scheme No 782 (2015-16) and was passed by a definite majority of the elected members of the provincial assembly.

He submitted that the scheme had a number of pro-poor social service delivery activities including roads, sanitation, water supply, school buildings, rehabilitation of streets and other services to be identified by representatives of the constituency.

He submitted that the consultants later submitted PC-1 costing Rs970 million to provide much needed services to the inhabitants of Peshawar.The lawyer said the respondent No 2 (chief minister) without assigning cogent or plausible reason dropped the scheme in a so-called mid-year review meeting held on June 10, 2016.

He submitted that in the review meeting the rest of the projects discussed in the meeting were not only retained in the ADP but were awarded additional hundreds of millions of rupees because these belonged to the constituencies of the chief minister’s political favourites. Ziaullah Afridi claimed in the petition that he was considered a threat due to his rise in the PTI and was included in the bad books of the chief minister.

“To teach the petitioner a lesson and deprive his constituency of any development work, respondent No 2 (chief minister) without having authority with a single stroke of pen through executive order dropped the ADP scheme, which was passed by 124 elected members of the provincial assembly,” the petition claimed.