Raja Pervez Ashraf to appear in Supreme Court

Raja Pervez Ashraf to appear in Supreme Court of Pakistan

Raja Pervez Ashraf, Former water and power minister of Pakistan, has been summoned to Supreme Court on Monday, October 31. The former minister is set to defend the accusation made against him of corruption, awarding of contracts
to different companies for rental power projects (RPPs).

These corruption charges have already cost Ashraf his ministry and now the former minister has to clean his name with the assistance of his legal counsel.

Ashraf has been called in as Faisal Saleh Hayat (Minister for Housing) and Khwaja Asif (PML-N legislator) have knocked at the doors of SC and asked the Chief Justife play their part in apprehending the culprit.

The Chief Justice, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, of Pakistan’s premiere court was traumatized by Hayat’s step forward and said, “It is very rare in the entire world that a sitting minister (Mr Hayat) has come up with a whole list
of corruption charges against the entire government.”

Chaudhry further said that he had never noticed that Nepra had sought the consumers’ opinion before allowing increase in electricity tariff. The court was surprised when Mr. Hayat informed it that the machinery imported by Walters
Power International for its 51MW Naudero-I plant was 23 years old even though machinery older than 10 years should not have been imported under the rules.

Hyat further addressed the court that the machinery was already used for 146,644 hours and urged the court to cancel all the contracts awarded to RPPs companies as they are in clear violation with laid down rules. He also asked
the court to send notices to the companies and tell them to return the advances given to them.

Khuwaja Asif shared the same views and termed the awarding of contracts as a big scam. He went further and said that had the same money been invested in public sector the countries power generation capacity would have increased
by 1,200 Mega Watts (MW) and reduced countries power rationing, which has been a major issue in the country recently.

“Had the money invested in RPPs diverted to the public sector generation plants, the government could have upgraded generation capacities at Jamshoro, Faisalabad and Multan and added another 1,200MW to the national grid,” observed
PML-N legislator, Khuwaja Asif.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=1975

Posted by Wajahat Javed on Oct 28 2011. Filed under Pakistan, Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry