SHC Restores FBR’ Millions of Dollars Worth Track and Trace Project

The Sindh High Court has restored millions of dollars Track and Trace project by giving the order in favor of M/s AJCL and FBR. SHC Judge Justice Kausar Sultan in her decision stated that this court has no territorial jurisdiction to pass an order. The plaintiff/bidder (SICPA SA) had challenged the FBR’s grievance committee order with regard to giving an Rs. 120 million track and trace project to M/s AJCL for monitoring of Tobacco, Sugar, Cement, and Fertilizer. The Swiss company through its counsel had stated that the bidding process was tainted with mala fide and lacked transparency. The sole purpose was to award the license to a predetermined party to the exclusion of others such conduct is unlawful, 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 so their orders cannot be challenged in SHC. The SHC Judge accepted the plea of AJCL as well as FBR on territorial jurisdiction and I am of the firm opinion that no cause of action has ever been done within the jurisdiction of Sindh High court so this court has no territorial jurisdiction to pass an order. It is pertinent to mention here that FBR after the process granted the T&T project to the AJCL consortium as it secured 182.93 marks while NIFT and SCIPA achieved 163.96 and 162.58 marks respectively. It is also worth mentioning here that the IMF has also directed Pakistan to implement the T&T system by June 2021 but owing to court orders, the government missed this deadline.