ISLAMABAD: A lawyer representing the Defence Housing Authority (DHA) in the EOBI scandal said on Wednesday he hoped the Supreme Court would not assume jurisdiction on a suo motu in this case.

“It is a matter of universal testimony now that exercise of suo motu jurisdiction has been overstretched by some benches of this court ever since the restoration of former chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry,” Advocate Irfan Qadir said in a statement submitted to an apex court bench headed by Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali.

The bench had taken suo motu notice of the multi-billion-rupee corruption scandal in the Employees Old-Age Benefits Institute (EOBI) relating to investment in private sector projects without approval by the Board of Trustees (BoT).

An investigation by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) suggested that the EOBI had made investment in two different DHA schemes. The first deal, worth Rs15.473 billion and signed on Jan 19, 2012, involved the purchase of 321 kanals of land in the DHA Islamabad. In the second deal signed on March 15 last year, the EOBI paid Rs6.82bn for 23 commercial plots of eight marla each, 12 residential plots of two kanals each and 162 three-bedroom and 29 five-bedroom villas in Sector F, Phase-I DHA Rawalpindi.

On Wednesday, the court asked the EOBI to reconsider in its BoT meeting scheduled for April 18 whether it intended to retain or surrender the properties after getting back payments it had made through investment in what was perceived to be a dubious real estate business with a number of housing societies.

Irfan Qadir argued that the BoT could not at this stage wriggle out of solemn commitments made earlier by the EOBI or in any way unilaterally recall the contract in question. Similarly, the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction to enter into lengthy investigations on questions of fact or law through tedious hair-splitting while exercising its jurisdiction under Article 184(3) and more so when the deal is even otherwise fair, transparent, legal and benefiting to the EOBI.

Mr Qadir, who served as attorney general when Iftikhar Chaudhry was the chief justice, cited the April 3 hearing in a different case which was later referred to Chief Justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani with a request to constitute a larger bench and decide the scope and extent of exercise of suo motu jurisdiction by the Supreme Court.

Even at the last hearing a judge of this bench had observed in a preceding case that “time has come to clear this mess”, the counsel said, adding that he hoped the court, while taking into account this important consideration, would not be misled in assuming jurisdiction in the EOBI case in which it had none under Article 175(2) of the Constitution. Justice Anwar Jamali agreed with the counsel that suo motu jurisdiction should be used sparingly and that parameters needed to be determined for the exercise of this jurisdiction by the court.

At a reference held in honour of former chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry on Dec 11 last year, the incumbent chief justice had also stressed the need for reconsidering and determining the limits and contours of jurisdiction under Article 184(3) of the Constitution with a view to discouraging frivolous petitions and preventing the misuse of jurisdiction by vested interests.

Irfan Qadir contended that no illegality in the deal between the DHA and the EOBI was committed. Prices and details of the properties were mutually agreed upon after due deliberation in an open and transparent arrangement which eventually culminated into a contract. It was duly entered and validly being executed for a lawful consideration in accordance with the provisions of the Contract Act 1872, Mr Qadir said in his statement.

As a whole the valuation of the properties on which these were sold to the EOBI by the DHA has been held to be correct and proper by Nespak which in its report verified an increase of approximately Rs1.9bn (12 per cent) in the price of property along Expressway and of Rs368 million (6pc) in property in Sector-F during the period.