PHC extends stay against GIDC for six months

PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court (PHC) has extended the stay order against the Gas Infrastructure Development Cess (GIDC) up to six months and restrained the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) from collecting the cess from industrial units and Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) stations of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
A two-member bench comprising Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth and Justice Asadullah Khan Chamkani turned down the federal government’s application filed for vacation of the stay order on collection of the levy.
The PHC on June 19 had stayed collection of GIDC from industrial units and CNG stations of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa by suspending the collection under the newly passed GIDC Act 2015. The high court had also restrained the SNGPL from recovery of arrears from the CNG stations and industrial units.
The petitioners’ lawyers, Shumail Ahmad Butt, Qazi Ghulam Dastagir, Muhammad Ishtiaq and Haziq Ali submitted before the bench that first the new act was against the law and illegal as the legislators didn’t remove the defects in the law as pointed out by the Supreme Court.
Second, the collection of GIDC from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was discrimination against the industrial sector of the province as through the new act, the government was collecting the cess only from Punjab and KP provinces and it had exempted two provinces, including Sindh and Balochistan, from it.
On the other hand, the federal government had filed an application in the case. It requested the high court to vacate the stay orders as the federal government was collecting the cess and arrears for gas-related developmental projects and it would affect the projects worth Rs145 billion. The bench dismissed the federal government’s application and extended the stay orders for next six months.