ISLAMABAD: Admitting a complaint against the blockade of wheat transport into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa filed by the PTI government, the Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the PML-N government in Punjab to refrain from taking unlawful measures.

Additional Advocate General Mustafa Ramday, who was representing the Punjab government, was also ordered by a three-judge Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja to tell the court on May 28 why the wheat procured in Punjab by the KP government was not being allowed to be transported out of the province.

The bench was hearing an application filed by Jamaat-i-Islami’s secretary general Liaquat Baloch on the plight of hapless citizens who are being forced to buy flour at exorbitant prices despite the fact that Pakistan is proclaimed to be “an agricultural country”.

The petitioner argued that a steep rise in the cost of living was taxing the meagre resources of the people, making it hard for them to make ends meet and put food on the table for their families.

At the last hearing on May 13, the court had asked law officers of the federal and provincial governments to help determine the constitutional consequences in case provinces failed to provide essential food items to the most vulnerable segments of society, in violation of citizens’ fundamental rights.

In its order on Tuesday, the court repeated the same directions.

In an application moved by KP Advocate General Abdul Latif Yousufzai, the province deplored that the Punjab government had imposed an unannounced restriction on the movement of wheat from its territory into KP. He said for the past 20 days, trucks loaded with wheat and bound for KP were being off-loaded at checkposts.

Court refuses to issue direction to National Assembly on wheat pricing

Not only is the restriction taking a toll on the transport system, the application stated, but this action was creating a shortage of wheat in the market, driving up the price of flour.

The free flow of edible commodities throughout Pakistan is

ensured under Article 151 of the Constitution, the application stated, adding that the federal government had fixed the procurement target of wheat to 0.450 million tons for KP for the year 2013-2014. This target has to be achieved during the current season ending June 30, 2014, the application said, adding that millers in KP were having a hard time getting the wheat they had purchased in Punjab, back to their mills for grinding.

During the proceedings, Advocate General of Balochistan Nazimud Din floated a proposal to bring down the price of wheat. The Balochistan government, he explained, had borrowed Rs5 billion from banks to buy wheat from growers each year and had to pay Rs680 million in interest on the loan. If the federal government paid the interest instead of the province, the saving would bring down the price of wheat by at least Rs3 per bag.

When Advocate Tauseef Asif, representing the petitioner, asked the court to pass an order requiring the government to consider reducing wheat prices in the budget, the court made it clear that it would not give any directions to the National Assembly. “You are representing the secretary general of a political party which is also being represented in the parliament,” Justice Khawaja observed, asking the counsel to ask his client to raise the matter in the assembly.

The court also ordered Attorney General Salman Aslam Butt to arrange a meeting of law officers of all the four provinces as well as the respective food secretaries with the assistance of Secretary of Ministry of National Food Security and Research Seerat Asghar on priority basis and submit a detail report on the next date of hearing.

The court also said that if the government could not ensure the fundamental rights of citizens by guaranteeing food security for the masses, it should amend the Constitution and delete the provisions that require it to do so. The court, the judges said, would interfere whenever the government failed to ensure the fundamental rights as guaranteed in the Constitution.

Published in Dawn, May 21st, 2014