LAHORE: Former Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Punjab president Ejaz Chaudhry has hailed the Lahore High Court (LHC) decision exposing PML-N government`s extortion through different surcharges in power bills.

He said the Lahore High Court had declared as illegal the recovery of surcharges like Equalisation Surcharge, Debt Servicing Surcharge, Universal Obligation Fund Surcharge and NeelamJhelum Surcharge, under electricity bills.

He said the Sharif brothers had looted the poor but now they had no other choice but to return the amount collected under the heads of these illegal surcharges. Thiswas the reason we saw unprecedented increase in electricity tarif f since Sharif brothers assumed the charge, he said.

He said the nation was paying the price of incompetence of water and power ministers. They were unable to control the line losses and were burdening the poor with hef ty electricity bills, he added.

Mr Chaudhry also lambasted the two-year performance of the PML-N government, saying it was pathetic as poverty, dearness,joblessness, corruption, deteriorating law and order situation and loadsheddinghadincreased.

PTI leader Dr Yasmin Rashid said shady practices of the Sharif brothers had always cost dearly to the poor masses. She said they had always found it easy to extort money from the poor via illegal tac-tics for their lavishing life styles.

She said a truly democratic government did not need to resort to such practices for revenue collection.

Public would endorse tough measures if they were taken for national interest, but here the money was going to near and dears of the Sharif brothers, who had installed rental power plants, she added. They have wasted billions of rupees on showy projects but in actual added just 100 MW of electricity in national grid and that too from solar power plant, she added.

PTI leader Andleeb Abbas said how shameful it was for a democratic government, who was illegally collecting money from people. But this government, however, was a remnant of dictatorship, which had devised different methods ofindirect taxing,she said.Ms Abbas said the Lahore High Court in its judgment had clearly stated that under section 31(5) of the constitution the levy of tax was only permissible under the authority of an act of Parliament as this power of levying the tax could not be delegated to the executive authority. For the Sharif brothers, she said, Parliament was just a rubber stamp as all decisions were being taken by their kitchen cabinet.

`We the Pakistanis will be holding beggars bowl for another century until and unless the looters and miscreants leaders would be kicked out of their dens,` she regretted. After Lahore High Court decision, she said, the Sharif brothers should be held accountable for deceiving and looting the nation through their undeclared extortion.