RAWALPINDI, April 8: The Lahore High Court (LHC) Rawalpindi bench here on Tuesday ruled that town municipal administrations were not authorised to impose taxes on advertising billboards in the absence of any relevant legislation.

Justice Maulvi Anwarul Haq ruled that the Supreme Court had already decided in such identical cases, saying no taxes on the billboards could be levied by the TMAs if there was no relevant legislation.

Haidri Beverages had moved the LHC against the TMAs of four districts — Rawalpindi, Attock, Chakwal and Jhelum — in 2003 for the collection of taxes on billboards.

There were about 19 petitions from different tehsils before the court raising same question that whether in the absence of a proper law TMAs were authorised to recover taxes from the companies displaying their advertising billboards at different places in the city.

The lawyer of the petitioner argued that there was already a Supreme Court decision in such cases, declaring that there was no law on the issue and until formation of any such law TMAs were not authorised to recover advertising taxes.

Meanwhile, Justice Maulvi Anwarul Haq also admitted the writ petition of Lt-Col (retired) Munir Ahmad against his termination from the services and sentence of one-and-a-half-year awarded to him by a military court for hiding his financial sources of income.

According to the petition, Munir Ahmad was terminated from army service on the allegations that he had not disclosed his full financial assets while filing income tax returns.

Under section 56 of the

Army Act he was awarded a sentence of one-and-a-half-year and terminated from the service.

He then submitted an application to the then army chief who dropped his sentence of imprisonment, but kept the termination from the service intact. Now he has challenged the decision of the military court before the LHC.

In yet another case, Justice Khalil Ahmad of LHC Rawalpindi Bench adjourned the hearing in reinstatement cases of UC nazims till April

22.

There were three identical appeals before the court filed by Raza Ahmad Shah, Hafiz Abdullah Butt and Yahya Faiz who resigned from their offices as UC nazims to contest the recent general elections.

They had stated before the court through their legal petitions that they had resigned from their offices before filing their nomination papers to contest the elections held in February.

They maintained that they never contested the general elections and could not be removed from the seats of nazim.

Earlier, Justice Syed Sajjad Hussain Shah of LHC had granted stay to Hafiz Abdullah Butt and Raza Ahmad Shah, suspending the acceptance of their resignations by the Election Commission and allowed them to assume their offices till final disposal of the cases.