LAHORE: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had reportedly initiated a probe into the Metro Bus Project — a 27-km long scheme completed by the PML-N-led Punjab government a few months before the 2013 general elections.

According to reports, the NAB has written a letter to the Punjab Mass Transit Authority, the Lahore Development Authority, the Traffic Engineering and Transport Planning Agency and the Planning and Development Department and sought information and documents related to the project approval, execution, completion, contracts etc.

Besides, the NAB has also sought information about senior project officials of the LDA and Tepa.

“NAB has not asked us to provide documents related to the metro bus project in recent days,” LDA Chief Engineer Israr Saeed told Dawn on Tuesday. He said NAB had contacted the LDA soon after completion of the project before the last general elections.

“When they had contacted us about three years ago, they sought various documents about the project. And we provided copies of a number of documents to NAB at that time,” Mr Saeed said.

He said soon after the 2013 general elections, NAB sought some more documents. And we provided these too, he added. Later, the NAB never contacted the LDA in this regard.

“However, we will always welcome NAB if it wants to know about the project more,” Mr Saeed said.

Published in Dawn, March 2nd, 2016