The Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Legislative Assembly session convened on Wednesday for the presentation of 2021-22 budget was prorogued by the chair sine die without going by its agenda as a mark of protest against a bar in the federal budget on the rate of withholding tax for the independent power producers (IPPs) located in the AJK territory.
The session was scheduled to commence at about 11am and weighty budget books had also been placed on the desks of lawmakers. However, it started at about 3pm due to an unusually long cabinet meeting on this issue.
Earlier, after the first long sitting of the cabinet at Block 4 of the civil secretariat, Prime Minister Raja Farooq Haider and his ministers held another round of discussions at the PM House before finally making it to the assembly building.
The assembly session was attended by just 16 legislators, excluding the speaker, and only one of them was from the opposition.
In what appeared to be an already agreed strategy, Speaker Shah Ghulam Qadir gave the floor to the prime minister before letting finance minister Dr Najeeb Naqi to deliver his budget speech.
Voicing serious concerns and reservations about some steps by the PTI led central government, PM Haider informed the house that there had been an ‘un-written understanding’ between the governments of AJK and Pakistan that all taxes imposed in Pakistan would be replicated in AJK, after a formal approval from the AJK assembly.
However, he added, an “anomaly” had been observed in the federal budget wherein the withholding tax on value of offshore supply contract of the IPPs located wholly or partially in the AJK territory had been fixed at 1% as against 1.4% in Pakistan.
He wondered how the central government could isolate AJK or take a decision that did not fall in its competence.
“Already our financial resources are scant and such a decision whereby they intend to cap the ratio of taxes to be collected by us will further multiply our fiscal needs,” he said, making it clear that the 1% cap was unacceptable to the AJK government.
He also regretted that the auction of additional spectrum in AJK had been once again put off till next year, in what was also a blow to the territory's economy.
Haider said AJK had regained its financial and administrative powers after a long and tiring struggle through an amendment in the Constitution.
“I know they want to enforce a new constitutional arrangement in Azad Kashmir for which they are out to obtain a two thirds majority in the upcoming polls. We also know that meetings [to this effect] are held in the office of the Prime Minister of Pakistan and chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan,” he alleged.
Haider went on to say that there were reports that the government of Pakistan planned to dole out Rs 50 million to each PTI candidate for development and warned against “breaking the legs of the people visiting AJK for this purpose.”
He said he had also made it clear to a federal minister that the central government could not directly spend any amount of money in AJK.
Between the lines, Haider also took umbrage at the AJK Election Commission (EC), which had declared last week that the [AJK] prime minister and ministers could not take part in election campaigns in official vehicles and had also recently stopped the tendering process of different schemes.
“Let it be clear that there is no concept of interim government in Azad Kashmir. The institution which has to conduct free and fair elections has been invested with these powers by this very house,” he said of the EC and added: “Neither can any institution be superior to the government nor can any institution take over the powers of the government.”
Sending a “loud and clear” message to the civil bureaucracy and all other AJK institutions that the AJK government would not let it happen, he said: “We do not want confrontation but at the same time we will not allow maneuverings to mar transparency and impartiality of elections. Our tolerance should not be misconstrued as our weakness.”
Otherwise, he warned, he might be compelled to utter such a thing that could be exploited by the enemy [India].
Asking all political parties not to compromise the integrity and prestige of AJK, he said he would welcome the government which would come to power through the power of vote.
But no party would be able to scale up the ladder to power with clutches of the central government, he added.
Haider claimed that as prime minister of Pakistan Mian Nawaz Sharif had not held any meeting on AJK polls in his office or even his private residences.
Contrarily, he alleged, PM Khan had held two meetings on AJK polls, "directing people and institutions under him that he wanted to see the PTI government in AJK at all costs."
“While you advocate the right to self determination of the Kashmiris, you are not ready to give us the limited right of five years here… If you do this, what will be the difference between you and those across the divide,” he said in a reference to Indian leaders.
The AJK premier also made it clear that AJK would not become a province.
“Yes it will become a province when the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir will decide so through vote.”
Wrapping up his speech, he asked the chair to adjourn the session sine die until a decision on the finance bill was made.
Though opposition MLA Malick Nawaz mildly opposed the idea but after reiteration by the prime minister of his arguments, he did not press for his demand.
After seeking opinion from law minister Farooq Ahmed Tahir, the chair read the presidential order regarding sine die prorogation of the session.
Tariq Naqash
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