KARACHI: More than 50 members of the Sindh Assembly — both from the treasury and opposition benches — have not paid income tax, revealed Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) data analysed on Monday.

While the federal finance minister in his foreword to FBR’s ‘parliamentarian tax directory for year ended June 2013’ called the document a ‘precedent’ setting ‘high standards of transparency’, the move failed to convince the house to set a new trend.

“The tax directory provides tax details of all members of Senate of Pakistan and the National Assembly of Pakistan and the provincial assemblies,” said the finance minister. “To date all the parliamentarians have obtained their NTNs and out of total 1,172 parliamentarians, 1,072 have filed their Income Tax Returns for the tax year ended on 30 June 2013 and for the remaining parliamentarians, due process is being undertaken.”

Among the remaining legislators, 58 belong to the 168-member Sindh Assembly in which the ruling party leads the trend with 33 of its members being among those who have not paid taxes.

Four of them are cabinet members namely minister for population welfare Syed Mardan Ali Shah, minister for wildlife and minorities Gyan Chand, minister for revenue, relief and rehabilitation Makhdoom Jameel-uz-Zaman and minister for transport, sports and youth affairs Mir Mumtaz Husain Khan.

Other PPP members who failed to pay tax during the last financial year included Nasir Hussain Shah, Abid Hussain, Mohammad Muqeem Khan Khoso, Syed Serfaraz Hussain, Abdul Sattar, Saleem Raza Jalbani, Ghulam Qadir Chandio, Naeem Ahmed Kharal, Muhammad Ali Khan Bhutto, Khursheed Ahmed Junejo, Syed Zai Abbas Shah, Bashir Ahamed Halepoto, Makhdoom Khalil-u-Zaman, Jamil Ahamed Bhurgari, Nawab Muhammad Taimur Talpur, Sardar Ali Shah, Faqirdad Khoso, Abdul Nabi Shah, Mujeeb ul Haq, Ghulam Shah Jeelani, Parveen Aziz Junejo, Fayaz Ali Butt, Shahid Taheem, Saniya Naz, Rehan Leghari, Shamim Mumtaz, Ghazala Siyal, Farhat Seemi, Gyan Chand and Pesu Mal.

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) remained the second largest party whose more than a dozen and a half lawmakers did not pay taxes.

Nineteen members of the opposition party who did not pay taxes are Saleem Rajput, Mohammad Rashid Khilji, Mohammad Iftikhar Ahmed, Mohammad Azeem Farooqui, Mohammad Kamran, Mehmood Abdul Razzaque, Nadeem Razi, Sheeraz Waheed, Ashfaque Ahmed Mangi, Waqar Hussain Shah, Bilqees Mukhtar, Heer Soho, Rana Ansar, Naheed Begum, Shazia Jawaid, Irum Azeem Farooque, Naila Munir, Arif Maseeh Bhatti and Dewaan Chand Chawla.

Pakistan Muslim League (Functional) members Saeed Khan Nizami, Waryam Faqeer and Mohammad Rashid Shah were also mentioned on the FBR list of the lawmakers who did not pay their tax. They were followed by two PML-Nawaz legislators including former Sindh chief minister Arbab Ghulam Raheem and Syed Amir Haider Shah Sheerazi.

Among the only four members of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf in the assembly, one was found among tax defaulters.

Khurram Sher Zaman did not pay any tax during the last financial year.

Among the provincial legislators, the highest tax was paid by PPP’s Awais Qadir Shah who paid more than Rs18 million, followed by Haji Khuda Bux Rajar of the PML-F and Rauf Siddiqui of the MQM with more than Rs17 million each.