Kathmandu, June 24

The Supreme Court refused to continue the stay order passed by it earlier in a writ petition filed by the Ajeya Raj Sumargi-owned Nepal Satellite Telecom.

His company had field a writ petition against revised amount of capital tax gains on the sale of its shares.

Today’s order was passed by a division bench of justices Sushmalata Mathema and Manoj Kumar Sharma.

This means that the government can now collect tax from Sumargi’s company.

Satellite Telecom Pvt Ltd had filed a writ petition on April 24 seeking repeal of revised tax. Cyprus based Airbell Services Ltd had bought 75 per cent shares of the company for which the government sought Rs 4.31 revised tax from Nepal Satellite Telecom.

On May 16, a single bench of Justice Bam Kumar Shrestha had told the government to keep its decision to collect revised tax from Nepal Satellite Telecom on hold.

The division bench of the SC observed that since a notice of revised tax had already been issued on May 14 and since written replies had already been submitted by the case parties, there was no need to issue interim order as demanded by the petitioner.

The apex court also said that the issues raised by the petitioner would be settled in the final hearing.