Pakistan's Federal Constitutional Court has dismissed 1,178 review petitions challenging the Supreme Court's judgment of 28 December 2021 on the constitutional validity of the Income Support Levy Act 2013. In a 16-page judgment, Chief Justice Amin-ud-Din Khan held that the power of review could not be treated as an appeal, and that settled disputes could not be reopened unless an apparent error on the record met the legal threshold. The decision leaves the 2021 ruling standing.

Review is not an appeal

The court recalled that a two-member Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Qazi Faez Isa had decided the levy question in December 2021, in Commissioner Inland Revenue v. Muhammad Mustafa. While review petitions against that decision were still pending, a three-member bench allowed an appeal in another case raising a substantially similar question in June 2022, in a judgment authored by Justice Munib Akhtar. The Constitutional Court said that a later decision in a separate case does not automatically overturn an earlier judgment, and that a bench should respect a legal question already decided while reviews remain pending.

Procedure, not a formality

At the centre of the dispute was legislative procedure under Articles 70 and 73 of the Constitution. The court observed that the prescribed procedure was a constitutional requirement rather than a mere formality, and that the Senate, as the representative body of the federating units, could not be excluded from the legislative process where a bill did not fall within the constitutionally limited scope of a Money Bill. The judgment stressed consistency in judicial decisions and respect for institutional conventions as essential to the integrity of the justice system.

Sources: Associated Press of Pakistan via Tez Khabar, PKRevenue.