The delaying tactics adopted by the bosses of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) in providing record of the controversial arts and craft village to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) may come to an end as the Islamabad High Court (IHC) has directed the FIA director to obtain record of the project from CDA on 12th of the current month. The directions were given after the FIA official told the court that despite directions of the court, the CDA chairman did not provide the requisite record of the arts and craft village project for investigation. During the hearing of a case filed by Director Operations Arts and Craft Village Shariq H Khan against the high-ups of CDA and management of Indus Heritage Village Trust (IHT) on Tuesday, Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddique directed the FIA official to remain in contact with the chief legal advisor of the CDA instead of other officials to get record of the project.
The petitioner, Shariq Khan, was appointed as director arts and craft village on July 23, 2008, but as he (Shariq) raised his voice against the illegal awarding of village’s contract to IHT and was terminated from his services on August 12, 2011, after which he moved the IHC against his termination. He, through his counsel, pointed out gross irregularities committed by the then CDA chief and other officials. He also informed the court that FIA was investigating the matter and prayed to declare his termination letter as illegal. In clear violation of CDA bye-laws the said project, with connivance of CDA officials, was awarded to the Indus Heritage Trust due to which some three months ago FIA took up the case for probing into the anomalies of the project.
However, according to the preliminary enquiry of FIA, which it had submitted before the IHC, many corrupt activities and illegalities have been committed by officials of CDA in the award of arts and craft village contract. According to the inquiry report, the CDA has awarded the management contract of arts and craft village to a firm M/S (IHT) against the rules and advertised conditions against the merit and in violation of PPRA rules. The report said that location of the project was illegally changed from Saidpur Village to park area just to benefit the private party. It has been submitted that CDA has provided incomplete record to the FIA and the scrutiny of provided record revealed that CDA has not provided vital information regarding initiation of the project and its award to IHT, financial and technical evaluation.
According to the inquiry report, CDA has also provided some details about the income of the project and perusal of that document revealed that IHT in last seven years has just deposited a nominal amount of Rs 18,000 in the joint account through another NGO namely ‘Sungi’ while utility bills worth more than Rs 3 million were pending against Sungi. CDA Chairman Engineer Farkhand Iqbal told Pakistan Today that he had no link with the record of project as his predecessors were responsible to keep the record of the said project. “If anyone in the CDA said that the record had been misplaced from the authority, it will be unjustified,” he said, adding he was also mulling to revise the agreement of arts and craft village as earlier it was not awarded on merit.
When contacted, CDA’s former member planning Tahir Shamshad, who is also respondent in the case, said the said project was initiated by directorate of environment and directorate of sports and culture of CDA. He said according to the director of arts and craft village project, the record of the project was sent to directorate of sports and culture. “But the directorate of sports and culture has made it clear that they have no record of the project,” he said, adding the record might have been misplaced.
