ISLAMABAD:
For the first time, the federal government has challenged the Federal Constitutional Court’s (FCC) ruling that had upheld the validity of legislation passed by the Balochistan Assembly, which authorizes the provincial government to levy excise duties on minerals to fund labor welfare in the mining sector.
The federal government through the law ministry has filed a review petition against the December 11, 2025 judgment, which was authored by FCC judge Justice Aamer Farooq.
The decision ruled out a constitutional challenge to amendments introduced through the Balochistan Finance Act, 2020, confirming the province’s legislative competence to impose the tax and strengthening the post-18th Amendment framework that expands provincial authority over residual matters.
The Court had observed that the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution consciously embraced the ethos of cooperative federalism.
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 is in clear departure from the clear mandate of Article 143 of the Constitution and the supremacy of federal legislation.
“Rather, the judgment has upset the delicate architecture of the distribution of legislative powers by validating provincial intrusions into the federal domain. The judgment itself cautions against upsetting this structural balance and assessing intrusions with a constitutional compass.”
The review petition argued that in an attempt to promote cooperative federalism, the judgment has forcibly injected the doctrine of dual aspect into the 1967 Act, which is essentially just a direct exercise of exclusive power under Entry 44 of the Federal Legislative List (FLL), which includes “excise duties”.
It is warned that allowing this interpretation to stand will not only create a constitutional conundrum, but will encourage other provincial legislatures to easily override federal supremacy by carving out duplicative aspects from any 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 revision petition said.
It is also stated that the judgment through its reliance on the doctrine of dual aspect legislation and cooperative federalism has given a carte blanche to the Provincial Assembly of Balochistan to amend Section 3 of the Minerals Excise (Labour Welfare) Act, 1967 through Section 7 of the Balochistan Finance Act.
The said amendment has effectively changed the rate and nature of excise duty, a matter which is outside the legislative competence of the provinces.
“The premise on which the entire judgment is built advances the notion that a single legislative subject can legitimately attract both federal and provincial jurisdiction. Furthermore, this narrative is designed around reliance on the preamble of the 1967 Act, where an incoherent reading of the preamble has split the purpose of being the federal 1967 Act’s purpose and being the federal subject. labor is a provincial subject”.
It is argued that the misplaced reading of the preamble to the 1967 Act in the judgment has overburdened the provincial jurisdiction over matters not falling under the Federal Legislative List (FLL).
“The FLL (along with the Concurrent Legislative List existing before the 18th Amendment) has been dealt with by this Court in various judgments in various contexts. The revision petition, referring to earlier SC judgment, said that this Court was faced with the question whether the subject of ‘electricity’ was a federal or provincial purpose for the purpose of a particular purpose (18) who has the power to fix the tariff of electricity supply by WAPDA”.
It is also argued that Pakistan is a democratic state with its federating units (provinces) and the constitution recognizes and balances the authority of the federation with the autonomy of the provinces, which recognition has been ironclad by virtue of the Eighteenth Amendment.
“This amendment to the Constitution has, among other things, introduced a drastic improvement in the legislative authority of the provinces by deleting the Concurrent Legislative List (CLL), whereby both Parliament and the provincial legislatures could previously legislate on the subjects enumerated therein.
The omission of the CLL left only a Single Legislative List (CLL) in the Constitution, which enumerates only subjects that can be legislated by Parliament alone, and under Article 142(c) of the Constitution, any subject not enumerated in these two lists will be subject to the Constitution, being within the legislative competence of the provinces.
“After considering Articles 97, 137, 141, 142 and 232(2) of the Constitution, the court found that only the federal legislature and not the provincial legislatures have extra-territorial authority to legislate and therefore the Industrial Relations Act, 2012, which regulated trade unions operating at a trans-provincial level, was Parliament”.
