ISLAMABAD, June 29: Justice Noorul Haq N. Qureshi of Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Friday stopped the allotment of residential plots to the deputationists at the Capital Development Authority (CDA) till final adjudication of the petition filed by its ex-officers welfare association.

The court issued notices to the respondents, the CDA chairman, members, estate and environment, director administration and director general Federal Government Employees Housing Foundation (FGEHF), and sought their reply.

Hafiz Arfat Ahmed Chaudhry, counsel for the petitioners, adopted before the court that his clients had legitimate expectation to get a respectable shelter for their families at the fag end of their lives. But the CDA by initiating the process of allotment of plots in favour of deputationists had painfully shattered their dreams, he said.

He pointed out that the director-general FGEHF, in a meeting held on April 24, 1990, had conveyed to the CDA officials that they would get 20 per cent of the residential plots in every sector and for this purpose, it had fixed certain terms and conditions and limitations, and among them the principle of seniority was the integral part.

He alleged that the CDA, contrary to the set criteria had allotted bigger size plots to influential officers but ignored those who spent their life with this organization.

According to him, the matter of allotment of plots to the retired CDA employees was placed before the CDA board and it was deferred till the opening of new residential sectors.

But the allotment of some 200 plots to deputationists in developed sectors from June 20 to 22 dismayed the members of the association, he said.

The CDA has grossly violated the precondition/its own standard operating procedure (SOP) and did not even circulate the list of the nominees of the plots among its employees inviting objections thereon, the counsel said.

The petition asserted that initially, it was compulsory for a deputationist to serve CDA for continuous three years to become eligible for a plot but this period was drastically reduced from three to two years and then one year and at present it is only six months.

The petition requested the court to declare that since the deputationists are not the employees of the CDA, their allotments should be cancelled. The petition also sought plots for ex-CDA officers who retired before the allotment policy was evolved. — A Reporter