Observer Report
Islamabad
Two Supreme Court (SC) judges, who were a part of the full bench that ruled to refer the properties’ matter of Justice Qazi Faez Isa’s family members to the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) for inquiry, issued their dissenting notes on Wednesday.
The notes were issued by Justices Maqbool Baqar and Syed Mansoor Ali Shah. A third judge, Justice Yahya Afridi, had sent his dissenting note earlier.
“We (Justices Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and Yahya Afridi) have however not been able to persuade ourselves to agree with the part of the short order, as contained in paragraphs 3 to 11 thereof, whereby directions have been issued to the FBR, to issue notices, and initiate proceedings, against the wife and children of the petitioner, and for submitting the report of the said proceedings to the SJC, for the later to proceed in the matter as contemplated in the aforesaid paragraphs, and with various other directions contained therein, for the following reasons,” said Justice Baqar in his 68-page dissenting note.
He said that there was no justification for directions, and guidelines to the FBR. “The said directions were/are clearly beyond the scope of the petition allowed/disposed of through the short order,” the judge observed.
“I found that the allegations against the petitioner were wholly unfounded, baseless, frivolous, misconceived and mala fide, and that the petitioner was right in claiming the purported Reference to be a product of animosity, malice of law as well as of facts and that it streams from the ill-will harbored by some functionaries of the executive against the petitioner,” he further maintained in his statement.
Justice Baqar added that, “It was found that despite commissioning the entire government machinery, to somehow ferret some excuse to proceed to dislodge the petitioner, and misusing the government departments, and resources, in unconstitutional and unlawful manner, in that pursuit, including covertly surveilling the petitioner, and his family, the official respondents have neither been able to show any illegality or misconduct on the part of the petitioner, nor that the wife and children of the petitioner are his dependents.”
He added that, “As discussed in detail earlier, neither any provision of the ITO 2001, nor of any other law, requires the petitioner to make the disclosure as was contended. There is no concept of any vicarious liability under the income tax law as was suggested by the respondents.”
Justice Baqar said that the properties that were acquired by the wife and children of the petitioner in the tax years 2004 and 2013, and the five-year limitation period for opening a tax assessment on them had expired several years ago.
