Fifteen reportable judgments across the 22 to 29 September 2026 upload window (Sunday 27 September excluded) — two from the Federal Constitutional Court, five from the Supreme Court, four from the Lahore High Court and four from the Sindh High Court (the Islamabad High Court returned no in-window entries).

Federal Constitutional Court of Pakistan

• Usman Shahid v. Nadia Sarwar — ‘harassment’ under section 2(h) of the Protection against Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act 2010 is confined to conduct sexual in nature; non-sexual workplace misconduct is left to ordinary departmental discipline, and the Supreme Court’s wider view in Raja Tanveer Safdar and Muhammad Din is, with respect, not followed. Petitions converted into appeals and allowed; the Islamabad High Court judgment set aside.
• Muhammad Akhlaq Khan v. NIRC — the remaining twenty-five per cent of a trade union executive need not be workmen; the proviso to section 8(1)(d) of the Industrial Relations Act 2012 is enabling and not compulsory, and it is for the members, through the union’s constitution, to decide whether to avail of it. Leave granted and appeal allowed; the Sindh High Court judgment set aside.

Supreme Court of Pakistan

• Mst. Farwa Noreen v. Hassan Ali Agha — the leading modern statement on dower and the Nikahnama: the document is evidentiary and not constitutive, Columns 13 to 16 are complementary rather than alternative and the dower recorded across them collectively represents the total dower agreed, and where property stipulated as dower cannot be transferred the husband remains liable for its value. Six questions of law answered; the individual cases directed to the appropriate benches on their own merits, with directions to Nikah Registrars and Union Councils.
• Collector of Customs v. M/s Forte Marketing Services — a Valuation Ruling under section 25A of the Customs Act 1969 remains the applicable customs value until revised or rescinded; the ninety-day period in Rule 107(a) governs the temporal proximity of valuation data, not the life of the ruling, and Sadia Jabbar cannot be read as extinguishing a ruling by mere passage of time. Petitions converted into appeals and allowed; the Sindh High Court judgment set aside.
• M/s Defence Housing Authority, Islamabad v. CIR — operating within a defined area and performing public functions does not make a body a ‘local authority’; what is required is the legal entitlement to control or manage a municipal or local fund, or to impose a cess, rate, duty or tax, and neither was established. Appeals dismissed; exemption under section 49(2) of the Income Tax Ordinance 2001 held unavailable.
• Government of Pakistan v. Muhammad Iqbal — an executive notification or Office Memorandum operates prospectively and cannot take away vested or accrued rights, and a beneficial O.M. must be implemented across the board subject to the criteria it prescribes; eligibility crystallises on the date the length of service is completed, not the date the department gets round to the case. Petitions converted into appeals and partly allowed; each case to be re-examined within three months by speaking order, with no recovery meanwhile.
• Nazir Ahmad v. Chief Secretary, Punjab — where a Service Tribunal finds the charge unproved, the inquiry conducted in breach of the governing Standard Operating Procedure and the civil servant denied due process, the proper course is exoneration, not reduction of the penalty. Petition converted into appeal and allowed; the Tribunal’s judgment and the departmental orders set aside and the petitioner exonerated with all back benefits.

Lahore High Court

• Mahmood Akbar v. Federal Board of Revenue — an investigation under the Anti-Money Laundering Act 2010 founded on predicate offences under the Income Tax Ordinance need not await the final determination of tax liability; the Court will not read a jurisdictional precondition into a special penal enactment, and Taj International is confined to the Sales Tax Act scheme it construed. Nineteen constitutional petitions dismissed, the requirement of a predicate offence and the burden of proof expressly preserved.
• Muhammad Masood Tahir v. Amanah (Pvt.) Ltd — following the insertion of Rule 11-A, a plea for rejection of the plaint must be raised in the written statement and a separate application is barred; the defendant’s remedy is to press for an issue, which the trial court may try first. Civil revision dismissed in limine, with a direction that the order be circulated to every District Judge in Punjab for onward transmission to the courts under their control.
• Commissioner Inland Revenue v. M/s Gulf Packaging — timely institution does not cure a failure to remove office objections within the time allowed, and the absence of an office objection as to limitation at re-filing confers no jurisdiction to ignore the statutory period; limitation is a matter of law, not a defect for the office to flag. Section 5 applications dismissed and the income-tax references dismissed as barred by limitation.
• Samina Siddique v. Abdul Ghaffar Razzaq — section 30(b) of the Punjab Pre-emption Act 1991 is self-executing: where the sale is by attestation of mutation, limitation runs from attestation and is not extended by want of the public notice under section 31 or by late knowledge, and a pre-emptor claiming exemption must plead the grounds in the plaint under Order VII Rule 6. Petition dismissed; dismissal of the pre-emption suit as time-barred upheld.

Sindh High Court

• Pakistan v. M/s Shan Foods (Pvt.) Ltd — entry 107 of the Sixth Schedule to the Sales Tax Act 1990 exempts the supply of iodized salt bearing brand names and trademarks, whether or not sold in retail packing, and is not conditional upon the supplier having imported the salt; the excluding words in entry 29 withhold relief and do not impose tax. Appeal dismissed; the learned Single Judge’s judgment maintained subject to clarification.
• Commissioner Inland Revenue v. M/s GE Vernova International LLC — section 105(1)(c) of the Income Tax Ordinance 2001 disallows payments by a permanent establishment to its head office or to another permanent establishment of the same non-resident; a separately incorporated group company is neither, even where it is a parent or affiliate, and a group charge is to be tested through the associates and arm’s-length machinery of sections 85 and 108. References answered against the applicant and dismissed; deletion of the disallowance upheld.
• Pakistan Television Corporation Ltd v. Collector of Sales Tax — after the substitution of section 47A of the Sales Tax Act 1990, recourse to alternative dispute resolution is mandatory for a state-owned enterprise and the monetary threshold does not apply; the provision regulates forum and procedure and so governs proceedings pending when it came into force, including a reference pending twenty-one years. Reference disposed of and the dispute referred to the FBR for constitution of a committee, with no coercive recovery meanwhile.
• Sindh Revenue Board v. M/s Glaxo SmithKline Pakistan Ltd — default surcharge under section 44 of the Sindh Sales Tax on Services Act 2011 is a strict, compensatory liability attracted whatever the taxpayer’s state of mind, whereas a penalty under section 43 may be imposed only where the department has established culpability on the record of the adjudication. First question answered for the Board and the surcharge restored; the second for the taxpayer and the deletion of penalty maintained — completing, with Fumicon and Itecknologi, the surcharge/penalty scheme.