ISLAMABAD, Dec 14: The Supreme Court will take up on Dec 16, a case of the Khyber Tractors Limited for the restoration of its appeal relating to duty exemption.

A three-member bench, comprising Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Rana Bhagwandas and Justice Mian Shakirullah Jan, adjourned the hearing for Thursday after counsel of the firm Senator S. M. Zafar requested the court to adjourn the matter as he had some urgent official engagements.

Earlier, the apex court had ordered to club the review petition of the Khyber Tractors Limited with a contempt of court petition of M/s Fecto Belarus Tractors as both were concerned with the exemption of taxes. Fecto Belarus has already submitted over Rs493 million as bank guarantee with the Supreme Court.

The Khyber Tractors Limited in its review petition had asked the court to clarify its earlier judgment against which the review was filed so that it could claim exemptions from the Central Board of Revenue (CBR). The Supreme Court had earlier dismissed the appeal as withdrawn.

In mid nineties, the Khyber Tractor had requested the government to allow exemptions of duty, sales tax, regulatory duty and service tax on the import of 7,700 tractors from abroad on the pattern of Awami Tractors Scheme.

The government granted the exemptions through CBR's SRO (statutory regulatory order), but the company failed to import the required tractors within the stipulated period.

Then the Central Board of Revenue withdrew tax facilities and issued another SRO barring the firm from importing tractors without duty and tax. The CBR allowed only those firms to avail of such facility which had submitted entry bills of the import of tractors with Central Board of Revenue offices at ports, but the Khyber Tractors Limited failed to do so within the given time.