Staff Reporter:
The High Court (HC) yesterday set December 4 for delivering its verdict on a writ petition challenging the legality of the process to hand over the operation of Chattogram port’s New Mooring Container Ter-minal (NCT) to a foreign company.
A High Court division bench of Justice Fatema Najib and Justice Fatema Anwar fixed the date after the conclusion of the hearing on the matter.
Senior lawyers Ahsanul Karim, AM Mahbub Uddin Khokon and Kaiser Kamal argued for the writ peti-tioner, while Attorney General Md Asaduzzaman and Additional Attorney General Mohammad Aneek Rushd Haque represented the state.
The writ petition was filed in July this year by Bangladesh Youth Economist Forum President Mirza Walid Hossain, referring to a newspaper report titled “Everything is in New Mooring Terminal, why hand it to foreigners?” published on April 26. The petition challenged the legality of the agreement pro-cess relating to NCT’s operation. The High Court issued the rule on July 30 after the initial hearing.
Speaking to reporters, petitioners’ counsel Ahsanul Karim said no open tender or competitive bidding took place when the previous government signed an MoU in 2019 with UAE-based DP World to operate the NCT.
“We expected the new government would stop these activities, but the opposite happened,” he said.
Karim argued that under the PPP law, foreign operators cannot be appointed to run existing infrastruc-ture, and projects below Taka 2,000 crore cannot be taken up. NCT is a well-established terminal gener-ating over Taka 500 crore annually, leaving no scope to hand over its operation to a foreign company under PPP, Ahsanul Karim added.
After the hearing, Attorney General Md Asaduzzaman told reporters that no final decision has been made regarding NCT.
“Some preliminary discussions are underway with a company. Presenting this as a final decision is mis-leading,” he said, adding that the writ is premature as there is no cause of action yet.
He also said a previous High Court verdict had rejected a similar writ involving another terminal’s opera-tion by a foreign company, and the court cannot take a contradictory position.
Responding to the argument that, under the PPP Act, approval must come from the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Attorney General said the Chief Adviser and Advisers of the interim government can exer-cise those constitutional powers.
NCT was earlier operated by Saif Powertec. Following expiry of its contract, the Bangladesh Navy took over operations on July 7 this year.
