Estate Office allotted 6,294 govt residences out of turn, SC told

A three-member Supreme Court bench was informed on Wednesday that since 2009 to date, the Estate Office had allotted 6,294 government residences out of turn to influential people.
Appearing on notice, Housing and Works Secretary Kamran Lashari assured the bench, omprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Khilji Arif Hussain and Justice Tariq Parvez that he would take action against illegal and out-of-turn allotments.
The court reserved its verdict on the application of Muhammad Afzal, a stenographer at the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), who had requested the court to take notice against the out-of-turn and illegal allotment of government residences.
The court directed Lashari to take across the board action against the people illegally occupying the official residences in the federal capital and ensure vacation of the houses, allotted illegally to the influential people.
The court further directed the housing secretary to ensure that the government’s residences should be allotted in accordance with the law. The chief justice said that the official residences should be allotted in a transparent manner and the case of Muhammad Afzal should be made a test case.
He said the court was not against any individual, but wanted the implementation of law, adding that corruption was rampant in the country.
He asked Lashari that if anybody tried to create hurdles in their way to initiate allotment of government’s residences to the deserving candidates in a transparent manner, the court should be informed so that it could ensure protection to them. He said allotment of government’s residences be made on merit.
Estate Officer Asim, while giving details of the pending applications of the candidates seeking government’s houses, said that an application of one Arshad Hussain was pending since 1972, while Syed Shabbir Ahmed’s application had been pending since 1974 and Asif Shuja Khan’s application had also been pending since 1977.
The chief justice then directed him to find out whether these persons were alive or not. He said the court had been informed that an employee of Ministry of Housing got out-of-turn house in Islamabad.
The estate officer informed the court that there were 0.5 million employees working in the federal government departments, while there were only 17,000 houses available. He said this was the reason that people were approaching to ministers or high-ups for getting government’s residences.
The chief justice, however, asked the estate officer to take bold steps for resolving the matter in the best interest of deserving people. He said the estate office should not rely on the court for its own work which it was duty bound to do. “Whatever you do should be on merit because the court wants that every one should get justice”, the chief justice noted.
The chief justice said he was very hopeful that both the secretary and the estate officer would take action against the illegal allotments. The housing secretary and the estate officer assured the court of taking concrete measures to ensure good results. Meanwhile, the court reserved its verdict on the application of Muhammad Afzal.