Islamabad High Court on Tuesday suspended Capital Development Authority’s permission to hand over four acres of land at Faizabad to an influential individual for the construction of 450 kiosks and the collection of licence fee from stall holders.
Hearing a petition filed by the Hawkers and Stall Holders Action Committee, Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui suspended the CDA order and sought a report from the Member Administration of CDA.
The petitioner, through his counsel Chaudhry Ashraf Gujjar, contended that the former CDA Chairman Farkhand Iqbal had handed over four acres of land at the Faizabad pocket on IJP Road to Raja Sajid Riaz, the front man of a politician, under the pretext of collecting Rs 1000 per month from existing hawkers and stall holders.
According to the petition, the chairman had accepted the application of the respondent without referring the matter to the CDA Board or formulating a policy on the subject or floating an advertisement. The petitioner stated that there were approximately 160 hawkers and stall holders but CDA had allowed Riaz to collect licence fees from 450 hawkers.
In the third week of October CDA had bulldozed all existing stalls of the hawkers, cleaned over the four acres of land and handed it over to Riaz for the construction of permanent structures for over 450 kiosks. The beneficiary had started selling kiosks at Rs 200,000 or rented them out at Rs 7,000 per month, with the intention to earn Rs 90 million, which would also incur huge losses to the authority. The petitioner prayed the court to set CDA’s order aside.
