ISLAMABAD: The government on Friday abolished free electricity for power-sector workers for the first time in its history, after the Lahore High Court upheld the move and cleared the final legal obstacle to ending one of the country’s most contentious energy-sector perks.
Notably, this decision will apply on officers in BS-17 and above at Wapda, distribution companies (Discos) and other state power entities. Now, their free units will be monetized. However, the lower-grade employees in BPS-1 through BPS-16 will retain their free electricity units’ facility.
The minister for Energy (Power Division) Awais Ahmed Khan Leghari, posting on X, called the ruling a landmark public-interest reform under Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government, saying the decision fulfills a “longstanding demand of the public” to root out preferential benefits that have long strained an already beleaguered grid.
The court accepted a petition filed by the Power Division, effectively stripping away the legal cover that had allowed the subsidy to survive multiple prior reform attempts.
Officials say the withdrawal is expected to plug financial leakage in the system and reinforce Islamabad’s broader push to stabilize an energy sector hobbled by debt and inefficiency. The government has framed the move as part of a wider reform agenda aimed at easing the burden on ordinary consumers, official said.
The LHC upheld the government’s decision to monetize free electricity benefits for power-sector officers. As per the court judgment, it ruled that the free electricity benefit extended to officers in BPS-17 and above at Wapda, distribution companies and other state power entities was never a statutory right but rather a discretionary administrative concession, and therefore not enforceable through constitutional jurisdiction.
“The facility in question was neither statutory nor vested in character but was extended merely as a discretionary service concession,” the judgment read, adding that its reconfiguration did not infringe any accrued legal right.
Notably, the Federal Cabinet Committee on Energy approved the monetization scheme in December 2023 on the basis of a Power Division summary, converting free electricity entitlements into fixed cash amounts calculated at supply tariff rates notified in July 2023.
