ISLAMABAD: The chairman of the Senate Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat said on Thursday that some officials of the Islamabad capital territory (ICT) administration helped a property tycoon fraudulently acquire over 1,200 kanals of land worth billions of rupees.

At a meeting of the committee held at Parliament Lodges, Senator Mohammad Talha Mehmood, the chairman, said the ICT officers had transferred the land illegally after the original owner of the land died.

A few years ago, the ICT officials found a man with the same name as the deceased land owner’s from either Fortabad or Multan and transferred the land to his name fraudulently. Later, the land was transferred to the tycoon’s housing scheme.

The Senator said: “If the owner had expired and there was no one to claim the land, it should have gone under the ownership of the state.”

Committee told ICT tracked down dead owner’s namesake to transfer the land

The issue was brought up at a previous meeting of the committee when the chairman asked the member administration of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) about the transfer of the land.

The CDA official had said the development authority did not deal with transfers of such large expanses of land and that such cases were dealt with by the ICT administration.

The committee chairman had then asked Additional Deputy Commissioner Islamabad Abdul Sattar Isani about the transfer to which the officer said he had no knowledge about the case. The committee had directed him to submit a report in the next meeting after going through the records.

The committee also discussed several issues about the CDA and directed the civic agency to improve its performance.

The 44 school plots, which the CDA had allotted to people between 1968 and 2007 for running schools at nominal rates, were also discussed.

These schools included Beaconhouse, City School, Headstart, Roots Montessori and others. The committee observed that the plots were allotted for schools as a welfare gesture but the institutes established on the plots earn billions of rupees annually and are not giving students any concessions in fees.

The committee directed the CDA to cancel the allotment of those plots where schools had not been built yet despite the deadline having passed.

The committee also showed displeasure over the Federal Investigation Authority (FIA) arresting CDA officers for allegedly facilitating the growth of slums.

Senator Mehmood said: “Before registering an FIR, the FIA should have given CDA officials a chance to conduct an internal inquiry.”

He asked why the FIA was not taking interest in the cases referred to it by the CDA against the civic bodies’ own officers.

The committee directed the FIA to provide them with the record of all completed inquiries about the CDA at the next meeting.

Published in Dawn, November 27th, 2015