The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Monday ordered the formation of a Commission to probe the alleged rampant corruption in the Capital Development Authority (CDA).
The commission was tasked to probe the deal of the Light Emitting Diodes (LED) project, fake allotments of plots at Kuri Model Village and other fishy deals made by the CDA in the recent past. The commission comprised of former Judge of Supreme Court Sardar Raza Khan, Inspector General of Police (IGP) Islamabad Bin Yameen and Session and District Judge Raja Jawad Abbas. IHC Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui on Monday resumed the hearing of a case filed by a citizen Fazal Hussain against the CDA. During the previous proceedings of this case, the court pointed out many hidden deals, which cost millions of rupees to the national exchequer. Earlier, the same court after conducting many hearings granted a stay order on the installation of 65,000 LEDs. CDA was about to start this project at an estimated cost of Rs 6.8 billion against the average cost Rs 2.billion as reported in the media. It was said that the CDA Chairman and a political figure were very keen to start this project to pocket kickbacks worth Rs 0.4 billion, however, the court didn’t allow them to proceed further. The petitioner of this case had apprised the court that a multi-billion LED project was awarded to a favourite firm by the then prime minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gillani and his task force constituted to oversee the CDA’s affairs. Asian Development Bank (ADB) offered to fund the project to the extent of $70 million on the condition that their financial support would be subject to satisfaction in respect of the “policy, financial, technical, contractual and legal aspects of the transaction, but later on after seeing the alleged corruption, the ADB excused itself from releasing funds for this project. On the other hand, the CDA allegedly allotted dozens of plots on fake documents in the Kurri Model Village Project. During the last proceeding, the court had ordered the former Chairman of Prime Minister Task Force on CDA Faisal Sekhi Butt to appear before the court on the next hearing. However, on Monday he didn’t turn up for the proceedings. The court again directed him to appear before the court on the next hearing fixed for September 17. During the course of the hearing, Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui asked Dr.Basit, the counsel of Faisal Sekhi Butt as to why his client was feeling hesitant to face the court? On this the counsel told the court that since his client had filed a reference against the justice, he was not appearing before the court. On hearing this, the Justice remarked that the court would initiate a contempt of court case against Butt, and it would be better if he appeared before the court. Earlier, CDA Chief Legal Advisor Barrister Masroor Shah and CDA Legal Advisor Chaudhry Muhammad Ramzan presented the details of the works that were started under the directions of Sakhi Butt. However, the court rejected this report and summoned the Director Road and Market Maintenance for the next hearing with the relevant records.
Time to take CDA to task
