LAHORE: The provincial government has amended the Punjab Revenue Authority Act 2012 to validate the authority and its actions with effect from the date of the enactment of the law.

The actions of the authority including levy, charging, collection and realisation of the sales tax on services have been challenged in courtsonthe groundthatthe authority was to be created under a notification of the government after the enactment of the law, but it was not done. And the authority began to collect revenue.

Another objection has been that the government was required to appoint chairperson and four members of the authority which it did not. Instead a single member continued to run the authority.

Officials said that under the Punjab Revenue Authority (Amendment) Ordinance 2015 these issues have been addressed.

One amendment says that a member means a member of the authority and included an ex-officio member.

The second amendment says till such time that the authority is constituted under this act, the chairperson shall perform the functions and discharge the duties of the authority.

The third amendment says that any action of the chairperson on behalf of the authority, or anything to the contrary contained in any decree, judgment or order of any court, the sales tax or any other amount levied, charged, collected or realised by the functionaries of the authority from any person shall be deemed to have been validly taken, levied, charged, collected or realised under the act.

And any action taken by the chairperson till the establishment of the authority under the act, shall be deemed to be the action taken by the authority.

The ordinance shall come into force at once and shall be deemed to have been taken effect from July 1, 2012, the date of the enactment of the law.

-Intikhab Hanif