Credit Information Bureau illegal, borrower tells court

LHC issued notice to SBP and the attorney general of Pakistan on a petition challenging the Bank of Punjab’s action.

LAHORE: Justice Iqbal Hameedur Rehman of the Lahore High Court (LHC) on Monday issued notice to the State Bank of Pakistan and the attorney general of Pakistan on a petition challenging the Bank of Punjab’s action of referring the name of the petitioner in the Credit Information Bureau (CIB) because of which other banks stopped doing business with him.

The judge directed both the respondents to file replies till the third week of September. The petition was moved on behalf of M/s Ehsan Taiwing Textiles Mills.

Petitioner’s counsel Shahid Siddiqui submitted that the bank, acting on a mere allegation of default, had referred the name of the alleged defaulter to the CIB constituted by the State Bank of Pakistan.

As a consequence, he said, the other banks had not renewed the loans to the petitioner. The counsel said that after reporting of the name in the CIB, no bank was inclined to do business with the petitioner. He said this was a violation of the fundamental right to do business as laid down in Article 18 of the Constitution. He said that after the introduction of 18th amendment in the light of Article 10(a) of the Constitution, without fair trial nobody could be declared a defaulter. He said that reporting the name to the CIB without trial by competent court was illegal and unconstitutional. Siddiqui requested that the CIB should be declared an illegal body and banks should be restrained from forwarding clients’ names to CIB without proving the allegations of default.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 31^st, 2010.