LAHORE: The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf has strongly objected to the rising trend of allowing the executive to encroach upon the sole prerogative of the Punjab Assembly of imposing taxes, visible in the recently passed several bills, particularly relating to the establishment of authorities.

PTI legislator Ahmer Rasheed Bhatti, while speaking to Dawn on Saturday, pointed out a growing trend in legislation, whereby the executive was overstepping the Punjab Assembly’s sole prerogative of legislation and lamented that the members were not bothered at all.

The PTI MPA said almost over two dozen bills had been passed during the last three sessions since January this year. In most bills, he said, a line was written “maybe prescribed by rules” and asserted that the “maybe” should have been substituted by “shall be”. He said, legally speaking, “maybe” was a vague expression, which did not bind the government to frame rules and the executive could play with this expression.

In the Punjab Enforcement Regulatory Authority Act, it may be mentioned, the expression “may be prescribed” has been used more than 100 times, which shows that the administrative department is either not sure what sort of legislation they intend to do or they intend to do as they please.

Party MPA cites court verdicts and constitutional articles stipulating legislature’s sole prerogative to impose tax

“The sad part is that the legislators whose job description comprises two functions i.e to legislate and perform oversight over government, they are failing miserably at both,” Mr Bhatti lamented.

Citing an example, Mr Bhatti said the government itself proposed in the Agricultural Income Tax Bill that the tax rate may be decided by the government through rules. Asserting that Article 77 read with Article 127 of the Constitution of Pakistan states that levying tax is the sole prerogative of the assembly, he regretted that the legislature itself was allowing the executive to drive as it liked.

Referring to different bills like Punjab Agricultural Income Tax Bill, Punjab Local Government Bill, Punjab Spatial Planning Authority Bill, Punjab Water and Sanitation Authority Bill, Punjab Education, Curriculum, Training and Assessment Authority Bill, the PTI MPA stated that the authorities were allowed to raise funds while using different government instruments such as bonds, debentures etc. He said the authority was a regulatory body but granted powers of public sector companies that had the powers to raise funds.

Mr Bhatti, who had left the civil service and joined politics, said there were multiple Supreme Court judgements observing that excessive delegated legislation should not be done and cited judgements in the Flying Carpet Company vs Federation of Pakistan (PLD 2016 Lahore 35) and the Engineer Iqbal Zafar Jhagra vs Federation of Pakistan and others (2014 SCMR 1337).

In the LHC flying carpet case, the judgement says: “legislature could not repose any power, essentially legislative, in another body or organ; it could not efface itself and set up a parallel legislative authority; it must exercise its judgement on vital matters of policy and enact the general principles which should be embodied in the legislation”.

Similarly, in the Iqbal Jhagra case in the Supreme Court, the judgement says: “…such legislative powers could not be delegated to the Executive authorities – Majlis-i-Shoora (Parliament) /Legislature alone and not the Government /Executive was empowered to levy tax. Delegation of such power to the Government/Executive was for the purpose of implementation of such laws, which was to be done by framing rules, or issuing notifications or guidelines, depending upon the case, but in no case, authority to levy tax for the Federation was to be delegated to the Government/Executive”.

This reporter severally tried to seek comment from Punjab law secretary Asif Bilal Lodhi on the legislation matter during the past weeks but he opted to keep mum.

Published in Dawn, May 22nd, 2025