ISLAMABAD:
For the first time, the federal government has challenged the ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) that had upheld the validity of the legislation enacted by the Balochistan Assembly, which empowered the provincial government to impose excise duty on minerals to fund labor welfare in the mining sector.
The federal government, through the Ministry of Justice, filed a review petition against the December 11, 2025 judgment written by FCC Judge Justice Aamer Farooq.
The decision resolved a constitutional challenge to amendments introduced through the Balochistan Finance Act, 2020, affirming the province’s legislative jurisdiction to impose the tax and reinforcing the post-18th Amendment framework that expands provincial authority over residual subjects.
The court had observed that the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution consciously embraced the spirit of cooperative federalism.
In challenging the FCC ruling, the federal government has argued that the interpretation given by this court regarding the limits of legislative competence between the federation and the provinces clearly deviates from the clear mandate of article 143 of the constitution and the supremacy of federal law.
“The ruling has rather disturbed the delicate architecture of the distribution of legislative powers by validating the province’s invasion of the federal domain. The ruling itself warns that this structural balance should not be altered and that the intrusion must be evaluated with a constitutional compass.”
The review petition contended that the judgment, in a bid to promote cooperative federalism, has forcibly injected the double aspect doctrine into the 1967 Act, which in essence is simply a direct exercise of the exclusive power under Entry 44 of the Federal Legislative List (FLL), which includes “excise duties”.
It is cautioned that allowing this interpretation to subsist will not only create a constitutional conundrum but will encourage other provincial legislatures to easily override federal supremacy by eliminating dual aspects of every federal legislation. “This will not only blur the lines between Article 142(a) and 142(c) but will also help make Article 143 redundant,” the review petition reads.
It is also stated that the judgment, being based on the doctrine of dual aspect legislation and cooperative federalism, has given carte blanche to the Balochistan Provincial Assembly to amend Section 3 of the Mineral Excise Duty (Labour Welfare) Act, 1967 through Section 7 of the Balochistan Finance Act, 2020.
This amendment has effectively altered the type and nature of the special tax, an issue that is beyond the legislative scope of the provinces.
“The premise upon which the entire judgment is based promotes the notion that a single legislative subject can legitimately attract both federal and provincial jurisdiction. Furthermore, this narrative has been crafted based on the preamble of the 1967 Act, in which a disjointed reading of the preamble has divided the objective of the 1967 Act into that the imposition of duty is a federal subject and the welfare of workers is a provincial subject.”
It is argued that the misreading of the preamble of the 1967 Act in the ruling has extended provincial jurisdiction to matters that do not fall within the Federal Legislative List (FLL).
“The FLLs (along with the Concurrent Legislative List that existed before the 18th Amendment) have been considered by this court in several judgments in different contexts. The review petition referring to an earlier judgment of the SC said that this court was faced with the question whether the element of ‘electricity’ was a federal or provincial matter (before the 18th Amendment) for the purpose of determining who has the power to determine the tariff for supply of electricity by WAPDA.”
It is also held that Pakistan is a democratic state with its federated units (provinces) and that the constitution recognizes and creates a balance between the authority of the federation and the autonomy of the provinces, the recognition of which has been given an iron coating under the Eighteenth Amendment.
“This amendment to the Constitution has introduced, among other things, a drastic improvement to the legislative authority of the provinces by eliminating the Concurrent Legislative List (CLL), by which previously both parliament and provincial legislatures could legislate on the subjects listed therein.
The omission of the CLL left only a single Legislative List (CLL) in the Constitution that exclusively enumerates subjects on which only Parliament can legislate and, under Article 142(c) of the constitution, any subject not enumerated in these two lists would be subject to the constitution and would fall within the legislative competence of the provinces.
“After examining articles 97, 137, 141, 142 and 232 (2) of the Constitution, the court concluded that only the federal legislature, and not the provincial legislatures, has extraterritorial authority to legislate, therefore the Industrial Relations Act 2012, which regulated the operation of trade unions at the trans-provincial level, was within the legislative competence of parliament.”
