The Supreme Court on Wednesday reserved its verdict in the Rental Power Projects (RPPs) case and directed the counsel for the Ministry of Water and Power and Pakistan Electric Power Company Limited (PEPCO), Khawaja Tariq Rahim to submit his written arguments by Saturday. A two-member SC bench comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and Justice Khilji Arif Hussain heard a suo motu case along with two identical petitions filed by federal minister Faisal Saleh Hayat and PML-N MNA Khawaja Asif alleging huge corruption in the award of RPPs’ contracts. Reserving its verdict, the court held that a detailed judgement, instead of a short order, would be announced.
Concluding his arguments, Rahim informed the bench that upon determination by NEPRA, outstanding amount of fuel price would be paid to the Reshma Power Project. Counsel for Karkey RPP, Akram Sheikh while concluding his arguments stated that per the accord, Karkey was bound to supply 231MW of electricity, whereas total power generating capacity of Karkey was 330MW if fuel was supplied to it, which he contended was the responsibility of the government. The chief justice asked Akram Sheikh to produce any document to prove his contention that fuel supply to the RPP was the government’s responsibility, on which he said it had been described in Regenerative Fuel Cell (RFC), which is the amended form of request for proposals (RFP). Khawaja Asif submitted a synopsis and rebuttal before the bench and contended that one party was given six RPPs, which he said was admitted by the counsel for Walters Power International, adding that despite the experience of Bhikki rental power project, the same party was awarded contract of six RPPs. He said in case of Bhikki, the rent agreement was for one year, whereas gas supply agreement was for nine months, adding that power of $137 million was supplied by it, whereas it was paid an amount of $217 million.
He said NEPRA being a regulatory authority was mandated to oversee the power sector, however it seemed to be abysmally absent in the decision making process for the subject matter and appropriate inquiries. He said violation of PPRA rules by PPIB in all the RPPs tenders was also witnessed. He said annual loss to the local industry was around Rs210 billion per year due to load shedding. He regretted that masses have crushed by buying electricity from these RPPs on very high rates.
