ISLAMABAD: Lawyers have occupied land worth Rs400 million of the Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) adjacent to the commissioner officer in Lahore.

During a Public Accounts Committee (PAC) meeting, the board’s chairman Siddiqul Farooq disclosed that a plot measuring four kanals and five marlas on Dev Samaj Road had been taken over by the Lahore Bar Association for the construction of Lawyers Hospital.

According to Mr Farooq, on April 4, 2014, former Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani issued directives to transfer the land to the lawyers. “Did the prime minister have any authority to transfer ETPB land to the lawyers?” asked PAC Chairperson Azra Fazal Pechuho.

The plot, said Mr Farooq, could not have been transferred to the lawyers in this manner, adding that some black sheeps within the ETPB were behind the transfer “as they wanted to hide their corruption”.

Mr Farooq, who belongs to the PML-N, has been criticising handing over of the board’s land to the lawyers by the former prime minister, while, it was a PML-N provincial minister who in January this year inaugurated the construction work of the lawyers hospital.

The board’s chairman claimed that lawyers started construction on the land and the ETPB could not stop them, adding “we can only write letters to the Punjab Bar Council and Pakistan Bar Council for retrieval of our land”.

This issue was brought into the notice of the PAC by director general of the audit department Maqbool Gondal.

Giving an overview of the audit objection, Mr Gondal informed the PAC that the ETPB in 2009-2010 awarded construction of an 11-storey Parking Plaza at a cost of Rs202 million on the said land to a contractor. After incurring an expenditure of Rs66 million the construction of plaza was halted by the Tehsil Municipal Administration (TMA) Lahore as the Punjab government had imposed ban on high-rise buildings.

Mr Gondal said in its meetings, the departmental accounts committee (DAC) in 2011 had directed the ETPB to recover the mobilisation advance from the contractor but the contractor had filed an application before a civil court and obtained a stay-order in his favour.

The board’s chairman replied that the board had won the case in civil court but the contractor had gone to the court of an additional district and sessions’ judge.

He suggested that the matter could be referred to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) as the bureau under the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) can take cognisance of the matter.

Mr Farooq assured the committee that a departmental inquiry committee had also been constituted to examine the role of some “insiders” and the report would be tabled before the PAC on Dec 10.

Published in Dawn, November 25th, 2015