• Focal persons didn’t coordinate with IHC, hindering progress on pending litigation
• Revenue cases worth Rs4.7tr remain stuck in courts

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is apparently ill-prepared in recovery of billions of rupees stuck in the litigation as its focal persons assigned to coordinate with the Islamabad High Court (IHC) never contacted the court officials designated for expeditious disposal of tax-related cases.

In January this year, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, during a meeting on expediting FBR’s legal cases, was informed that currently 33,522 cases involving Rs4.7 trillion were pending in various courts and tribunals across the country.

A senior IHC official told Dawn that in order to expedite the disposal of tax matters in the Islamabad High Court the FBR designated focal persons from its different departments.

As per the documents, the FBR’s focal persons included Hassan Zulfiqar, Naeem Hassan, Chaudhry Javed, Saif Mughal and Riaz Ahmed.

Likewise, IHC also assigned the judicial registrar to coordinate with the FBR’s focal persons.

The names of focal persons from both sides were finalised following a meeting of FBR chairman with the IHC chief justice.

The court officials, however, said that none of the focal persons contacted them for the regular updates of their cases.

Interestingly, the FBR was also ignorant about the decisions on 270 tax related cases recently decided by the IHC that allowed the revenue authorities to recover Rs600bn until the news was reported.

Sources in the IHC said that following the publication of news, FBR’s Member Legal Mir Badshah Khan Wazir contacted the court’s judicial branch for verification.

It may be mentioned that the IHC in several cases ruled against the FBR saying its officials apparently weakened their own cases.

These cases included Asaa Impex, Telecom Mobiles, Southern Travel and Army Welfare Hosiery Project.

As per the court’s judgements announced in these cases, FBR officials did not pursue their case before the tribunal and filed time barred appeal after the lapse of statutory period for challenging the tribunal’s decision.

One of the FBR focal persons whom Dawn contacted said that the member legal is responsible for maintaining database of pending cases, effectively pursuing them before the tribunal or courts and also making the decision of filing appeals against the judicial orders.

Mr Wazir, the FBR member legal, when approached said that he was posted to his present office last year and the appointment of the focal persons was made much earlier to his posting. He said that the FBR’s spokesman can answer this question.

FBR spokesman Dr Najeeb Ahmed did not respond to the queries despite repeated attempts.

Published in Dawn, June 14th, 2025