Labour under pressure for delaying Sikh leader’s elevation to House of Lords

LONDON: Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s office is under intense pressure from the influential British Sikh community after a key Sikh leader and human rights activist’s announcement to the UK House of Lords was delayed minutes before the official announcement.

A row has broken out over Dabinderjit Singh Sidhu, principal adviser to Sikh Federation UK, as he was to be one of the new political peers announced last Tuesday but his name was missing when the list was released by Downing Street, although leading journalists were given his name in the morning.

There are reports that the announcement of Dabinderjit Singh Sidhu, a strong supporter and advocate of Sikh causes, was dropped but the Sikh Federation UK said in a statement that the nomination of Mr Sidhu to the House of Lords has been delayed and the announcement is expected in January.

Sikh groups have said Dabinderjit Singh’s name was to be one of the new political peers but his name was missing when the list was were 832,000 filers who neither filed their returns nor sought extension.

“We have served them tax notices to ascertain why they did not bother to file their returns,” official sources said, adding that the law would take its course if the reply was not received or was found unsatisfactory.

The FBR has so achieved over 4 percent revenue growth in the first five months of the current fiscal year and for achieving the desired tax collection target, it requires 40 percent growth in remaining seven months.

The FBR’s target of December 2020 possesses significance so efforts are underway to achieve the desired results. The FBR had envisaged a tax collection target of Rs4963 billion and the tax machinery fixed target of 45 percent for first half of the current fiscal year.

It is a challenge for the incumbent regime that the FBR’s tax collection remained flat at Rs4 trillion in last two fiscal years 2018-19 and 2019-20.

The last fiscal year could be blamed on eruption of COVID-19 pandemic for the flat revenue growth because in pre-COVID-19 scenario, the FBR was achieving revenue growth in the range of 16 to 17 percent that nosedived substantially after the outbreak of deadly Coronavirus.

According to the FBR’s official statement issued on Saturday, the taxpayers, who filed Income Tax Returns till 8th December, 2020 were 1.78 million. That number has further increased to 2.19 million with the addition of 377,766 more returns filed from 9th December till the issuance of the statement. Income Tax paid during filing of returns stood at Rs31 billion.

The number of Income Tax Returns for previous year till the same period was 1.98 million and the tax paid was Rs16 billion. This year, there is twofold increase in income tax paid with the annual returns.