LAHORE, Oct 14: A division bench of the Lahore High Court comprising Mr.Justice Hamid Farooq and Mr.Justice Pervez Ahmed on Monday issued a notice to the Punjab Local Government Department on an intra-court appeal against the dismissal of a writ petition challenging the imposition of sanitation fee on the people of Lahore by the defunct MCL.

Petitioner M.D.Tahir submitted that he had filed a writ petition against the imposition of the sanitation fee on Lahorites by the administrator of the defunct MCL which had been dismissed by Mr.Justice Ijaz Ahmed Chaudhry holding that the civic authorities could impose taxes on the citizens under the Local Government Ordinance. He submitted that he had challenged the imposition of a fee through his writ petition and not a tax.

He further submitted that the imposition of the sanitation fee was illegal as it had been levied on the people of Lahore without fulfilling the legal obligation of inviting their objections. Moreover, the method of imposition of the fee was discriminatory as the government organizations and departments had been exempted from its payment on the one hand and the same yardstick had been applied for prescribing the rates of the fee for posh areas like Defence and Gulberg and the backward kutcha abadis on the other. Moreover the provision of the sanitation cover was a compulsory function of the civic bodies under the law. No fee could, therefore, be charged from the citizens by a civic body for performing its compulsory function.

The appeal will come up for hearing next week.