Loans recovery case adjourned

LAHORE: A Lahore High Court full bench Friday adjourned for further arguments on petitions pending adjudication for years regarding recovery of loans under Finance Institutions (recovery of finances) Ordinance 2001.

A single bench in 2016 had suspended Section 15 of the ordinance as it was argued on behalf of the petitioners that the section had been reintroduced through Financial Institutions (recovery of finances) Amendment Act 2016 and was not sustainable in light of Supreme Court’s judgments. Prime Minister Imran Khan during July last at a ceremony of “Naya Pakistan Housing Scheme” had referred to the matter and requested the chief justice for early disposal of the petitions.

Later, Chief Justice Sardar Muhammad Shamim Khan had fixed hearing of the matter before the five-member larger bench headed by senior puisne judge, Justice Mamoon Rashid Sheikh. Other members of the bench include Justice Shahid Waheed, Justice Abid Aziz Sheikh, Justice Jawad Hassan and Justice Asim Hafeez.

During the Friday’s hearing, Attorney General Anwar Mansoor Khan and Additional Attorney General Ch Ishtiaq A Khan appeared before the bench on behalf of the federal government. The attorney general urged the bench to recall the stay order as the government had been facing huge loss in terms of no recovery of defaulted loans worth billions of rupees. He said it happened nowhere in the world that people refused to return loans. He argued that the government should be allowed to auction the mortgaged properties to recover the defaulted loans. A counsel from the petitioners argued that the mortgaged properties could not be put to auction without calculation of payable amount. He said the mortgaged properties of the petitioners had never been evaluated. He said huge loans of influential persons had been written off by the government but the common citizens had been subjected to cruel proceedings. The counsel said the impugned Section 15 of the ordinance was contrary to various provisions of the Constitution.