ISLAMABAD: After strengthening its law department the Capital Development Authority (CDA) has decided to implement a stricter policy dealing with lawyers working for the civic body.

“In the future the deputed lawyer of the respective wing will be held responsible and answerable in case of an ex-prate decision against the Authority,” CDA Chairman Maroof Afzal said at a high-level meeting on Wednesday.

It was decided that CDA needed to pursue cases more vigorously for more prompt decision.

“Traditionally the concerned departments were either not bothered or were not involved by the law department in pursuing the cases in courts,” said a senior official of the administration department.

Under the new arrangement, the CDA has decided to depute lawyers in each wing of the authority, and the lawyers would be responsible for cases pertaining to their respective area only like the engineering wing, environment wing, estate wing etc.

“The relevant lawyers will be responsible for follow up and progress of cases regarding their respective wings and will submit progress reports about the cases on a regular basis,” the chairman said.

The meeting was called as CDA has decided to improve the performance of its law wing. It was noted that a high number of cases were pending in the courts related to CDA but the authority was facing difficulty in representing itself in court.

CDA currently faces 4,223 cases pending in courts including 3,050 in civil courts, 650 cases in the Islamabad High Court and 36 cases are pending in the Supreme Court. Additionally there are 587 cases which have been filed by employees of the authority against the management mainly regarding inquiries against them or promotions.

CDA spokesman Asim Khichi said the growing trend of various entities obtaining stay orders, needed to be countered.

“People go to the courts over any issue or non- issue but this is creating serious operational hurdles for the civic body,” he added.

The meeting also discussed the issue of departmental inquires. CDA decided that all the nominated inquiry officers shall be asked to finalise the pending inquiries within one month and submit inquiry reports.

“As a policy we should initiate an inquiry against the relevant inquiry officer who causes undue delay in finalising the inquiry reports,” CDA chairman noted.

He added that officers against whom inquiries are being conducted will not be posted in that department so that they are unable to influence inquiries.

Published in Dawn, October 30th , 2014