LAHORE: A division bench of the Lahore High Court (LHC) on Tuesday turned down the request to sell raw material at Chaudhry Sugar Mills, believed to be owned by the ruling Sharif family and their close relatives.
The request was made through an application moved on behalf of the Chaudhry Sugar Mills administration in the already pending appeal against shifting of the Sharif family’s sugar mills.
The bench postponed the main case for further hearing until April 24 with directives to hold proceedings on a day-to-day basis.
The bench, on March 2, had ordered to seal Haseeb Waqas Sugar Mills in Muzaffargarh and Chaudhry Sugar Mills in Rahim Yar Khan.
The bench was hearing intra court appeals moved by the administrations of two mills and the Ittefaq Sugar Mills, challenging a single bench’s order that had set aside the shifting of these three mills to new districts of southern Punjab.
The single bench had passed the impugned decision in October 2016 on petitions filed on behalf of the administration of JDW Sugar Mills of PTI leader Jehangir Tareen and others.
The counsel for JDW Sugar Mills Barrister, Ch Aitzaz Ahsan, had said that the three sugar mills of the Sharif family had completed their shifting process in blatant violation of the stay orders issued by different courts. He had pointed out that the Chaudhry Sugar Mills spent Rs 600 million on its relocation despite the stay.
He submitted bank documents and photographs of the mills’ shifting process in support of his argument. He had said that the relocation policy announced by the provincial government in 2015 was based on mala fide intents and even environmental laws were ignored while shifting the mills.
