KARACHI, June 23: Disposing of an application moved by the Karachi Building Control Authority, the Sindh High Court barred the Provincial Ombudsman on Thursday from entertaining anonymous complaints and soliciting complaints through media. A division bench, comprising Justices Sarmad Jalal Osmany and Amir Hani Muslim, asked the ombudsman to strictly adhere to the provisions of law in conducting an inquiry into maladministration in the KBCA in accordance with a high court order as clarified by two subsequent orders.
Earlier on seeing an anonymous complaint produced by the KBCA counsel Shahid Jamil Khan, the bench wondered why it was not consigned to the wastepaper basket. It also wanted to know whether the ombudsman publicised all complaints and sought information through the press into all allegations conveyed to him or did so in selective cases.
The bench observed that Section 10 (2) of the Establishment of the Office of Ombudsman for the Province of Sindh Act, 1991, categorically forbade the ombudsman from entertaining anonymous or pseudonymous complaints.
The preceding Section 10(1), it pointed out, declared that ‘a complaint shall be made on solemn affirmation or oath and in writing addressed to the ombudsman by the person aggrieved’. How could the ombudsman invite information from the public on promise of secrecy in view of the provision? it asked.
Syed Iqbal Hasan Rizvi, legal adviser to the ombudsman, and Additional Advocate-General M. Ahmed Pirzada submitted that the KBCA affairs were being probed in compliance with a court order. Under sub-section 5 of Section 10 of the 1991 Act, the ombudsman ‘may adopt such a procedure as he considers appropriate’.
The bench observed that the provision itself required that ‘every investigation shall be conducted in private’. The procedure adopted by the ombudsman must conform to the overriding clause.
Besides, since the inquiry was being conducted under a court order, it must remain within its confines.
Advocate Shahid Jamil Khan submitted that the ombudsman has misconstrued the court order to mean a probe against the incumbent chief controller of buildings.
On the basis of an anonymous letter, which also called for removal of the CCBO and his replacement by the serving education or health secretary, he had unleashed a personal vendetta against the CCBO and had sought the service record of the entire KBCA officers’ corps.
The counsel said the ombudsman could not be allowed to institute an open-ended, roving inquisition or conduct a media trial against the CCBO or the KBCA under the cover of a court order, which had been twice clarified by the court.
Notices were being issued to the CCBO in every complaint pertaining to any KBCA official. The lawyer submitted a list of seven functionaries who acted as ‘authority’ under Section 4 of the Sindh Building Control Ordinance, 1979, in recent times who had not been issued notices by the ombudsman though the matters being probed pertained to their period. The KBCA working, he added, would suffer adversely unless the ombudsman was restrained from interfering in its affairs.