PESHAWAR, Nov 24: Officers of the customs and excise group have sought intervention of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz for reversal of recent decision of the Central Board of Revenue , transferring 26 deputy commissioners of income tax group in the sales tax and central excise directorate.

Sources told Dawn here on Wednesday that the customs and excise group officials had prepared separate presentations against the CBR decision, which would be sent to the prime minister and CBR Chairman Abdullah Yousuf.

The decision to make presentations to the prime minister was taken under section 22(2) of the Civil Servant Act 1973, they added. The sources said that the CBR through a notification issued on Oct 29 transferred 26 deputy commissioners of the income tax group to various collectorates of customs, central excise and sales tax located all over the country. But on the next day, the CBR issued a corrigendum notice and partially modified the earlier notification to the extent the words "customs and excise group" was to be read as "sales tax department", the sources maintained.

"There is no sales tax department with the government of Pakistan," said an aggrieved customs official. Therefore, the notification issued on Oct 30 was just a nullity in the eyes of the law and a non-starting decoy meant to camouflage the whole sale insertion of income tax group officers into the customs and excise group, he commented.

In order of priority of choices for various occupational groups exercised by the CSS officers coming through the competitive examination each year, the customs and excise group was normally the first and second choice, while the income tax was normally the fourth and the fifth choice, official sources said.

Consequently only the officers on the top of nation wide merit could make it to the customs and excise group, while officers who were lower in the nation wide merit were allocated to the income tax group, they added.

The impugned order of the CBR was practically an attempt to make a backdoor entry of a large number of income tax group officers into the customs and excise group where they had already failed to make it on open merit, they said.

This backdoor entry laid the foundation for the ultimate destruction of the whole system of holding the competitive examination conducted by the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) for merit based induction into various occupational groups of the CSS, they alleged.

They warned that if the transfer decision was not reversed, it would open the flood-gates of backdoor entries. This CBR decision of transfers of the income tax group officials took away a large number of posts which otherwise would have been available to the officers of customs and excise group, they maintained.

The Central Board of Revenue Act 1924 enjoins that all policy decision taken by the CBR should be taken by the Board-in- Council. It was very surprising that such an unprecedented major policy decision was not even taken once to the Board-in-Council for discussion purpose.