LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Tuesday declared a federal government’s policy of holding auction of toshakhana (treasury) articles for a selected category of people illegal.

Allowing a petition against the government’s decision to sell the toshakhana articles through auction to officers of the federal government and armed forces only, Chief Justice Muhammad Qasim Khan directed the government to introduce legislation to make the auction transparent and fair.

Adnan Paracha, a lawyer by profession, filed the petition saying the policy to allow the officers of the federal government and armed forces only to participate in the auction was discriminatory and unlawful. He asked the court to set aside the impugned process and order the government to also allow common citizens to participate in the auction.

In an interim order passed on Nov 17, 2020, the chief justice had suspended a notification issued by the cabinet division, which states, “It has been decided to dispose of various articles available in the toshakhana of the cabinet division to the officers of federal government and the armed forces through auction by inviting sealed bids.”

The sealed bids were invited up to Nov 23 while the bids were scheduled to be open on Nov 25.

At an initial hearing, Chief Justice Khan had observed that prima facie the process of the auction was in violation of Article 25 of the Constitution, which envisages equality of the citizens. The chief justice also remarked that non-transparency was evident at the first step of the auction process.

“Is only the bureaucracy eligible to buy these items?’’ the chief justice had posed a query to the government and added were the rest of the people insects in the country. He further observed that the government’s decision of selling the toshakhana items to its officials only was like a blind man distributing sweets but among his loved ones only.

During the final hearing on Tuesday, Chief Justice Khan observed that the individual rulers had no right to get the gifts received by the foreign counterparts as “they are in fact gifts from one state to another.”

He remarked that such gifts needed to be preserved in a museum instead of putting them on sale at cheap prices.

In this case, the government had informed the court that no auction had been held for the sale of toshakhana articles during the last five years.

Published in Dawn, May 26th, 2021