LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Monday stayed an agriculture department’s notification regarding imposition of levy on cold storages for being involved in business of agriculture products.

The Sahiwal Cold Storage Association having around 120 members in Sahiwal filed a petition challenging an order of the special secretary (agriculture) requiring the cold storages to obtain licences and pay market committee fee alleging they were involved in sale and purchase of agriculture produce, which was only permissible after obtaining a licence.

Representing the association, Advocate Taffazul Haider Rizvi argued that the special secretary had wrongly determined that the cold storages undertook “act of processing”, which means freezing or preserving the agricultural products.

He said the cold storages only provided ambient temperature ranging from zero to 10 degree centigrade for storing mostly potato seeds and other agriculture produce. He said no transactions or sale purchase of agricultural produce was done at the cold storages.

The counsel pointed out that that if potato seed was stored below freezing temperature it would lose its germination and become useless. He said the special secretary passed an ‘omnibus order’ as the members were receiving the same order whereby only name and amounts were different but rest of the order was exact copy, which reflected that the same had been passed in a slipshod manner without application of mind.

The counsel asked the court to set aside the impugned order of the agriculture department for being illegal and without lawful authority.

Justice Ayesha A Malik issued a notice to the agriculture department and suspended the operation of the [impugned] order demanding licence fee from the cold storages. The hearing was adjourned for two weeks.

Published in Dawn, September 19th, 2017