KARACHI, Jan 5: The federal government has invited recommendations from all provinces for the enforcement of anti-benami laws to discourage those who buy property in other’s names to evade taxes, said the Sindh minister of law and human rights, Justice Abdul Rahman, while talking to lawyers who met him in his office here on Saturday.

He told them that he had held talks with his counterpart in Punjab on these laws.

Justice Rahman said the government had taken strict notice of purchase of property in other’s names. He recalled that, in the past at the time of agriculture reforms, certain landlords had lands in excess of the reform ceiling transferred in the names of their employees and relatives through “Mukhtarnamas,” as a result of which the reform objectives could not be fulfilled.

The minister said the government was also examining the possibility of specifying a date for the recovery of outstanding taxes from the real owners of properties who were hit by the anti-benami laws.

In the Lahore meeting, Justice Rahman said, it was also decided that officials concerned of Punjab would visit the Judicial Court Complex at Karachi Central Prison and review the utility of the new system so that aggrieved children and women were provided immediate justice after removal of administrative impediments in the way of provision of justice in Punjab, like Sindh.

In the Judicial Court Complex at Karachi cases of women and children are tried at the central jail instead of taking them to the City Courts.—APP