ISLAMABAD: A two-member division bench of Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Tuesday upheld the judgement of Justice Athar Minallah that scrapped the Federal Government Employees Housing Foundation (FGEHF)’s project of developing the F-14 and F-15 sectors.

The foundation and some affected plot buyers had filed appeals against the order.

The division bench, comprising Justice Aamer Farooq and Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani, had reserved the judgement last month which was announced in an open court on Tuesday.

State has no commitment to give plots in a non-transparent manner to judges, journalists and lawyers, judgement says

“All appeals are dismissed,” ruled the bench.

The decision was welcomed by the land owners who had approached the IHC against the land acquisition.

Justice Minallah of the IHC in October last year while deciding petitions filed against the acquisition of land for the sectors had asked the Capital Development Authority (CDA) to take over the under-developed housing schemes and “judiciously dispense the plots after developing the two sectors.”

The judge had noted: “Beneficiaries (of both sectors) are serving or retired officers and employees of federal ministries, divisions, attached departments… judges of the superior courts, i.e. the honourable Supreme Court, all the high courts, Azad Jammu and Kashmir Supreme Court and the Chief Court and Supreme Appellate Court of Gilgit-Baltistan as well as the Federal Shariat Court.”

The beneficiaries also included serving and retired employees of autonomous/semi-autonomous bodies, public sector corporations under the control of the federal government, journalists, media workers, lawyers, employees of [the housing] foundation, the Ministry of Housing and Works… and constitutional bodies.

The verdict added: “The approval of the housing scheme proposed to establish F-14 and F-15 was accorded by the prime minister without placing the proposal before the federal cabinet.”

It said: “No act of parliament empower[ing] the prime minister or any other member of the executive to sell, transfer, lease or in any other manner dispose of land or assets vested in the government otherwise than in a transparent manner.”

Such an act “attracts the offence of corruption and corrupt practices as defined in section 9 of the National Accountability Ordinance 1999.”

The judgement also observed that the judges of the lower courts of Islamabad who “would ultimately hear and decide references of the affectees under section 18 of the Acquisition Act have either already availed the benefit or have applied for [a] plot to the foundation, thus... having a personal financial interest in the cases before them”.

It further said: “The entire machinery involved in the acquisition of land through the police force, from the chief commissioner to the land acquisition collector, has a financial interest in the foundation i.e. to get a plot at a price lower than what it would fetch through a transparent sale.”

Journalists and media workers, who are supposed to hold state organs accountable by exposing their misdeeds, have also been made stakeholders, Justice Minallah had noted.

Similarly, he regretted that lawyers who should defend the affected persons and highlight grievances related to the violations of their fundamental rights were also a part of this “state largess.”

The judge observed that “none of the members of these categories have a vested right to obtain land in a non-transparent manner. Such an extraordinary privilege is not part of the terms and condition of a federal government servant or any other employee who is a member of the [housing] foundation.”

The verdict declared that “the state has no commitment to give a plot in a non-transparent manner to judges, journalists, lawyers or any other beneficiary of the [housing] foundation.”

According to the judgement, “there is no explanation why this largess is available to persons who are privileged and wield influence in society while the less-privileged, downtrodden and shelter-less have no access to such lucrative financial benefit[s]. There is also no explanation why those who were evicted from [the katchi abadi in] I-11 and their mud houses bulldozed were not offered such profit-making largess by the state.”

The judgement noted that the Lahore High Court (LHC)’s Rawalpindi bench hearing a case related to the acquisition of land for G-13 had, on Nov 8, 1999, prescribed the criteria for allotment of plots to judges of the superior courts.

The bench had directed inclusion of employees of autonomous and semi-autonomous organisations, the Election Commission of Pakistan, Supreme Court, Federal Shariat Court and LHC Rawalpindi bench, the National Assembly, senior members of the armed forces, journalists, doctors, engineers and lawyers.

He recalled that the same bench had also directed the housing foundation to allot plots to senior lawyers Sharifuddin Pirzada and Aziz A. Munshi as well as former chief of naval staff Admiral Fasih Bokhari.

But Justice Minallah noted that it was “difficult to comprehend why shelter-less struggling young lawyers were ignored while two senior successful lawyers who indeed were not in need of financial assistance or shelter were offered this grace or largess at the expense of land which vested in the state.”

Published in Dawn, September 26th, 2018