LAHORE - The Lahore High Court yesterday stayed recovery of agriculture tax from the farmers and sought reply from the Punjab revenue department on the next hearing, July 20.
Justice Ayesha A Malik of the LHC passed the order on various applications challenging recovery of agriculture tax from the farmers. The petitioners through their counsels told the court that the provincial government had imposed this tax through an ordinance which was illegal and unjust. He stated that the farmers were already paying different tax and now they could not be burdened within income tax. He requested the court to declare levy of this income tax as null and void.
Meanwhile, a citizen filed another application before the LHC seeking directions for Election Commission of Pakistan to restore the details of assets and liabilities of parliamentarians including Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, PM son-in-law Capt ® Safdar and others from ECP website.
A lawyer-petitioner Shabbir Ismail filed the application and submitted that the ECP was violating the superior courts order by removing the nomination papers and details from the website. He stated that under article 19-A of the Constitution read with Right information and Transparency Act, the ECP had not authority to remove such list from website.
He alleged that this action was an attempt to corrupt parliamentarians in order to replace the statement by adding or removing the assets including offshore companies. He stated that this action of the ECP was fraud and illegal, without jurisdiction and malafie.
He requested to direct the ECP to place on website the details of assets, liabilities and annual returns filed with by these parliamentarians at the time of filing their nomination papers in year 2013.