ISLAMABAD, Jan 2: Deputy Commissioner Tariq Mehmood Pirzada has lodged a fraud case with Margalla Police Station against the owners of a private housing project , Engineering Housing Scheme (EHS), accusing them of floating advertisement without his approval and selling membership forms without having the land in their names.

On the other hand, the Capital Development Authority (CDA) has cleared the housing scheme and will issue a No-Objection Certificate (NoC) to its owners on Monday, the authority's member planning, Brig Nusratullah, said.

The housing scheme is being developed on almost half of D-16 sector's land. Talking to Dawn, the deputy commissioner said the owners of the housing scheme had not obtained approval from him prior to publishing advertisement in newspapers.

He said under section 144 of the CrPC, all owners of private housing societies and schemes were bound to get approval from the DC office before advertising. He claimed that the EHS owners might have the required land but it was not in their names.

Mr Pirzada said despite all these anomalies, the housing scheme's membership forms were being sold at a cost of Rs1000 each. "Lodging of an FIR was the first step against the owners and if they do not meet the requirements, further action could be taken against them," he added.

Meanwhile, the CDA's member planning, who had issued a show- cause notice to the EHS management on Friday, told Dawn that he had cleared the scheme after the owners agreed to fulfil all legal requirements.

He said the owners were receiving membership applications directly although they were bound to get these through a bank. However, now they have agreed that the applicants should submit their forms to the bank.

In this way, chances of fraud would be minimized. Earlier, the CDA had warned the public to avoid purchasing plots in the housing scheme till its owners met all requirements to avoid anomalies in the project.