LAHORE, June 10: Fire partially gutted ground floor of the Lahore Development Authority building near Civil Secretariat on Thursday. The police said the fire broke out at the one-window operation counter.

A fibre glass shed at the counter caught the fire, they added, saying no reason could be ascertained immediately. The LDA staff with the help of fire fighting equipment put out the blaze before the fire tenders reached there.

Saying that a probe into the incident had been ordered, an LDA statement issued late night claimed that everything, including record and furniture inside the building, remained safe.

It may, however, be mentioned that the LDA had closed this office for 10 days in April to scrutinize the land record on complaints that the land mafia in connivance with the authority's officials was depriving people of their property.

The authority has so far failed to computerize the record even after the lapse of two months but has opened the office. An LDA official told Dawn on Thursday that the first phase of retrieving the record of exempted, allotted and auctioned plots had been completed.

The authority would, however, take another month in computerizing the entire record of 60,000 plots in its schemes, he said, adding, the scale of fraud would be determined thereafter.

Sources in the authority said that a number of files of the plots were missing from the record. The entry of several allocated and exempted plots existed in both the demand collection registers and possession register.

They said the double entries in these registers should be eliminated and all such files that comprised exchanged plots be forwarded to the finance directorate for adjustment.