ISLAMABAD: The Sindh High Court (SHC) has dismissed the case pertaining to the award of millions of dollars worth of track and trace project.
The bidder, SICPA SA, had challenged the FBR’s grievance committee’s order with regard to giving Rs120 million track and trace project to M/s AJCL for monitoring of tobacco, sugar, cement and fertiliser.
The Swiss-based company through its counsel had stated that the bidding process was tainted and lacked transparency as the sole purpose was to award the license to a predetermined party to the exclusion of others.
On the other hand, the order states that M/s AJCL has also raised some objections on the maintainability of suit and territorial jurisdiction of this court through filing an application.
AJCL pleaded that tender was floated from Islamabad while all bids were received and evaluated by the licensing committee based in the federal capital, therefore, their orders cannot be challenged in SHC.
SHC’s Justice Kausar Sultan in her decision conceded that the Sindh High Court had no territorial jurisdiction to pass an order on track and trace award and accepted the plea of AJCL as well as FBR on the matter.
It is pertinent to mention here that FBR had granted the project to the AJCL consortium as it secured 182.93 marks while NIFT and SICPA achieved 163.96 and 162.58 marks, respectively.
It is also worth mentioning here that the IMF has also directed Pakistan to implement the track and trace system by June 2021 but owing to court orders, the government missed this deadline.
FBR is optimistic to collect Rs100 billion revenue by implementing this project during the ongoing fiscal year.
