October 15, 2008	Wednesday	Shawwal 15, 1429

RAWALPINDI, Oct 14: The Lahore High Court (LHC) Rawalpindi bench here on Tuesday while hearing a narcotics case observed that business of renting private cars was unlawful as the activity did not come under the ambit of commercial taxation.

A division bench of the LHC comprising Justice Syed Sajjad Hussain Shah and Justice Zafar Iqbal Chaudhry observed this during hearing of a petition of a man seeking custody of his car that was seized by the Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) after the officials recovered narcotics from the vehicle.

The bench observed that there was a difference between the token tax levied on a private vehicle annually and the token for a vehicle used for commercial purposes.

The token rates for the commercial vehicles were three times more than the tax paid for private cars but the owners of private cars use them for commercial purposes without paying commercial tax, the court observed.

Hazrat Muhammad of Peshawar had moved the court to get the custody of his impounded car that was rented out to Muhammad Amin who was arrested by the ANF in Attock last year and narcotics were recovered from the vehicle.

The observation came in response to a point raised by the lawyer of the petitioner that his client’s business had been suffering and that he was ready to furnish the required surety bond to get the car.

The court put off the hearing till November 15 and directed the investigators to file their comments in the case.

Meanwhile, another double bench comprising Justice Hamid Ali Shah and Justice M A Zaffar expressed their anger over the delay on the part of the provincial government in paying the money to a contractor and gave last chance to the government to come up for arguments, saying otherwise the court would decided the case without hearing it.

Chaudhry Abdul Majeed, who has not been paid Rs5.656millions since 1996 for the contract awarded to him for the development of an area near Chak Doulat Jehlum in 1985, said in his petition that the government inked an agreement with his construction firm on July 16, 1985 for construction of roads, footpaths, drains, extended sewage system and development of the area for a technology college at Chak Doulat near Jehlum.

According to Waqar Bhatti, lawyer of the petitioner, the government was not clear in its plan of construction and kept changing their proposed construction plan and it later canceled the contract.

The petitioner then filed a case with the s civil court that gave a decree in his favor.

The government challenged the decision in the LHC. The lawyer said the case had been pending since 1996 and the government lawyers were using delaying tactics on different pretexts. The court put off the hearing till October 27.