THE Pakistan Parliament on Thursday [March 4] voted Rs 18,17,34,000 and Rs 30,16,84,000 for 1947-48 and 1948-49 respectively under the heads, Customs, Central Excise and Salt, Taxes on Income including Corporation Tax, Provincial Excise, Forest and Pakistan Railways. ... While some of the speakers, mostly from the Opposition benches, raised `little` storms over imposition of salt tax and increase in excise duty on hookah tobacco, cut motions on Pakistan Railways provided an opportunity to all sections of the House to discuss ... unsafe Railway travel in East Bengal, [etc].

Replying to the sentimental objection of the Congress members to the levy of salt tax, Mr Ghulam Mohammad, Finance Minister, assured them that the tax had been levied out of sheer need of the new state. There was no other suitable alternative source of income which could bring such substantial income to the national exchequer without hurting man as little as did the salt duty. ... Hookah tobacco tax again `hubble-bubbled` in the House, when some members said that this was the only luxury enjoyed by the East Bengal jute grower. Dawn Special Correspondent