Supreme Court Saturday fixed a petition, challenging the appointment of Tauqir Sadiq as the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA) chairman, for hearing on June 1. The petition is filed by Muhammad Yasin, OGRA Executive Director, against the Federation of Pakistan through lawyer Mian Abdul Rauf. A three-member bench of the apex court on Thursday had reissued notices to the federation through the secretaries of Establishment and Cabinet divisions, OGRA chairman and other officials but none of them appeared before the court.
The petitioner pleaded that Tauqir was involved in malpractices, favouritism, discrimination and corruption. He maintained that during his appointment as OGRA chairman, not a single criterion was followed by Tauqir whereas his LLM degree was also dubious. He also said law clearly provided that the OGRA chairman must be a person of known integrity and eminence with proven experience of more than 20 years in the relevant filed; therefore, OGRA Ordinance had been violated in the appointment process.
The petitioner further maintained that the record was provided full account of malfunctioning with reference to illegal acts of commission and omission, seriously affecting the regulation of oil and gas sector in Pakistan. The court also fixed the same day, June 1, for hearing of another petition, submitted by Shahid Orakzai against the government over a US$233.7 million contract with Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd of the Peoples Republic of China.
