KARACHI: The comments from Ministry of Communication were called by a division bench of High Court of Sindh (SHC) comprising Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah and Justice Mahmood A Khan in a petition filed by importer of construction vehicles including Crane Lorries, Transit Mixture Trucks Dumper Trucks.
The bench later adjourned hearing till June 23. The petition was filed by Haji ihsan ullah khan of Ihsanullah Construction Company who made Collector Customs, Model Customs Collectorate, Hyderabad, Assistant Commissioner, Additional Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner and Director Intelligence and Investigations, respondents in the petition. The petitioner maintains that he entered into an agreement with different parties based in Japan and UAE in 2013 and 2015 for import of 950 and 1500 units of specialized construction vehicles.
The petitioner maintains that Custom officials first disputed the declared value, later said that each vehicle to be valued for custom duty and other taxes individually. The custom released 70 vehicles provisionally after securing disputed amount of custom duty and other through post dated cheques.
The petitioner later challenged the assessment by the custom officials after which respondent officials in order to teach a lesson questioned the importability of the vehicles and said the import was banned.
The question of ban taxed the bench which after hearing the contentions from both the sides asked the Deputy Attorney General, Asim Mansoor Khan to seek comments from the Ministry of Communication to clarify that whether these vehicles can be imported into the country or not.