ISLAMABAD: Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of the Islamabad High Court (IHC), while issuing a detailed judgment in the matter of the Amnesty Scheme for smuggled/seized vehicles here on Monday, declared the scheme illegal. The scheme was introduced by the PPP government in March this year causing almost Rs35 billion loss to the national exchequer.
The court further observed, “It is beyond understanding why the Amnesty Scheme was introduced for the vehicles already confiscated by the Customs authorities which could have fetched far more revenue through an open auction. Perhaps the government officials would also desire reaping fruits of their sullied hands by taking a piece of the pie”.
The court noted, “the Amnesty SRO has not been framed for the welfare of the people rather framed by certain influentials for their own benefits and the benefit of certain privileged class.”
The IHC bench recommended that corrupt customs/government officials must be uprooted and legal action against such individuals as well as an inquiry committee might be established to examine the corrupt practices and suggest a code of ethics to be strictly complied with by all the government departments.
The same IHC bench on June 20 through a short order declared null and void the Amnesty Scheme ab initio that the former PPP government had introduced by giving concession of duties and taxes on illegally-imported smuggled/seized vehicles through an SRO 172(I)/2013 dated March 5, 2013.
Through this order Justice Siddiqui directed the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to seize all the 50,901 vehicles and auction them. The petitioner Khawaja Saad Saleem through his counsel Syed Javed Akbar advocate adopted before the court that the federal government on March 5, 2013 introduced an Amnesty Scheme for smuggled/seized vehicles allowing release of vehicles on payment of redemption fine along with duty and taxes on smuggled/non-duty-paid motor vehicles. However, the said SRO does not allow the aforesaid concessions in payment of duty and tax on the import of vehicles through a custom station in violation of the Import Policy Order. The petitioner contended that Amnesty Scheme was being misused in a number of ways by the persons lined up behind the scene being authors of the said scheme.
Petitioner had prayed to the court to declare the said Amnesty Scheme illegal and unconstitutional being ultra vires, discriminatory and based on mala fides.
On the other hand, FBR in its reply had submitted before the IHC bench that the Supreme Court of Pakistan, in missing persons’ case while taking up the issue of law and order situation in the province of Balochistan, also examined the issue of smuggled vehicles plying in the province. SC had observed that these smuggled vehicles posed a threat to law and order situation in the country because of their use in crime and with no apprehension of being traced due to non-registration. Therefore apex court had directed customs authorities to take necessary steps. That in this perspective of the matter Amnesty Scheme had been launched by the federal government, FBR said in its reply.
The IHC observed, “From the customs data collected, it appears that 50,901 vehicle have been regularised by payment of Rs15,862.27 million as duties and taxes which could have been much more had the regular rate of duties/taxes been applied to such vehicles. The recovery would be three to four times greater than what FBR claims.
The Amnesty Scheme besides being discriminatory has also been applied in a discriminatory manner to achieve certain political objectives with mala fides. Furthermore, the Amnesty Scheme has not given the country any benefit as a whole. Rather, questions arise whether a law which instead of eliminating, has encouraged the offence of corruption and moral turpitude can ever be allowed to subsist or allowed inception.
The court directed to the law enforcement authorities that all cars registered under the Amnesty Scheme must be ceased and re-registered under normal scheme or reverted back to pre-SRO position. This will be a lesson for all proponents of amnesty schemes to refrain from such malicious and capricious SROs in the future and also a lesson for the public at large not to jump at opportunities in complete disregard of rule of law and instill in them some sense of social responsibility.
The court noted that amnesty schemes should be abolished permanently as they were used by politicians to pursue political objectives at the cost of rule of law which must prevail. The bench has also recommended that a tighter border controls must be placed to ensure that smuggling is prevented and all violators severely punished.
