RAWALPINDI: The Excise and Taxation department reopened the PPP Rawalpindi chapter offices on Thursday, saying it has received a cheque for Rs175,000, while local PPP leaders claimed officials from the department reopened the offices voluntarily.

“A PPP delegation of Iftikhar Chaudhry and Naveed Kanwal met with Excise and Taxation officials and requested that the office be unsealed. However, the officials maintained that the party had to pay property tax,” Excise and Taxation Rawalpindi Region Director Tanveer Gondal said.

He said the department also made it clear it was not under pressure to seal the PPP offices from the Punjab government, and was running a campaign to recover outstanding payments from defaulters.

“The party’s local leaders gave the department a cheque for the said amount on Thursday and the department unsealed the office. The amount of tax will be re-valued after getting the part’s ownership papers in the coming days,” he added.

Excise and Taxation dept claims party paid outstanding taxes

He said the property tax could be re-valued, but officials would need to collect details about property values in the area, and the committee responsible would include party office bearers.

However, local PPP leader Naveed Kanwal told Dawn the party’s office bearers did not pay the tax, and the Excise and Taxation department chose to reopen the offices voluntarily because the incident was a misunderstanding.

He said department officials said the property had been wrongly valued and added that the party would pay the tax, because it believed in paying taxes and fees.

He said the PPP has postponed its plans to protest against the sealing of its offices.

The party is making arrangements to observe the death anniversary of Zufikar Ali Bhutto on April 4, after which a delegation will visit the Excise and Taxation department to submit details about the ownership of the property.

PPP workers criticised the current and former office bearers of the party for not abiding by the law and said it was strange that the party failed to run the city’s affairs smoothly despite collecting funds.

A senior party leader told Dawn that former city president Amir Fida Paracha – who was the party president for 10 years – should be held accountable for not paying the property tax on the party offices.

“The present office bearers, who assumed the charge last month, are not aware of the issue as the Excise and Taxation department sent notices to Amir Fida Paracha and his group, but they did not inform the present office bearers about this,” he said.

He said party infighting was the main cause of embarrassment for the party that it did not pay the taxes introduced by its government in its last tenure.

Published in Dawn, March 31st, 2017