The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Friday directed the District Collector (DC) Islamabad to recover Rs190 million from former information minister Pervaiz Rashid, ex-finance minister Ishaq Dar, ex-principal secretary to PM Fawad Hassan Fawad and Ataul Haq Qasmi in light of the Supreme Court orders.
The court directed the district collector to submit its report after ensuring the recovery within three months. The court disposed of the petitions of Pakistan Television Corporation with the above instructions. IHC’s Justice Mohsin Akhter Kayani issued a five-page-long written order on the petitions of PTV Corporation seeking execution of Supreme Court’s verdict in line of the abovementioned recovery. The order said that PTV Corporation was authorized to recover the amount under Land Revenue Act.
The Supreme Court had declared the appointment of Ataul Haq Qasmi as chairman and managing director PTV null and void on November 8, 2018. The top court also ordered PTV to make recoveries of Rs190 million from those responsible for the unlawful appointment.
According to the decision, Qasmi was liable to pay 50% of the total money as the beneficiary of the illegal acts, ex-information minister Pervaiz Rashid is liable to pay 20%, former finance minister 20%, and Fawad Hassan Fawad 10% of the said amount. The PTV Corporation had approached the IHC for implementation of the top court’s judgments regarding the recovery of losses from the stated persons.
Separately, Islamabad High Court on Friday suspended the notification of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) regarding blocking of Islamabad district administration’s bank accounts and ordered their restoration. Chief Justice Athar Minallah announced the decision after listening to arguments from the state counsel. State Counsel Danial Hassan appeared before the court on behalf of district administration Islamabad and adopted the stance that the FBR had frozen the bank accounts over not-payment of dues.
He stated that Christmas is due and the Christian workers need to be paid their salaries and prayed the court to issue orders for unfreezing the accounts for the payments. The court served notices to the FBR and also suspended its notification regarding the bank accounts’ freezing.
