ISLAMABAD: Senator Farhatullah Babar on Monday said that continued posting of serving army officers as Director General (DG) Military Lands and Cantonments is a conflict of interest and violation of Supreme Court (SC) orders.
This was stated by Babar while taking part in a discussion in the Senate Defence Committee. The meeting presided by Chairman Mushahid Hussain Sayed and was attended by Senators Lieutenant (Lt) General (r) Abdul Qayum, Sehar Kamran, Col (R) Tahir Hussain Mashadi, Hidayatullah and Ilyas Bilour, besides the mover Farhatullah Babar.
“The continued posting of serving military officers since 1999 on the civilians’ cadre post of DG Military Lands and Cantonments is an issue of violation of the SC’s June 2013 order of conflict of interest and demoralising civilian service cadres,” he said.
He said that the first priority of the DG military land is supposed to watch the interests of the landowner namely the federal government whereas the military is the user of the land. Placing the interests of landowner into the hands of the land user is a serious conflict of interests, he further said.
It can be argued that all irregularities committed in the use of land by the military in the past decades were got overlooked due to a waiver by the then caretaker prime minister because the landowners’ interests were in the hands of the land users. Similarly, a former army chief was given 88 acres of land as a postretirement benefit, he said.
Secondly, he said that SC in June 2013 had said that “non-civil servants could not be appointed on deputation to any cadre of government,” while declaring illegal appointments to cadre posts without the competitive process by the FPSC. DG is a BS 21 civilian cadre post and appointments to it are made by the FPSC through CSS exams, he said.
He said that in March 1995, a committee formed by former prime minister Shaheed Benazir Bhutto strongly opposed any move to place the department under the charge of serving officers of the land user department.
He said that eight serving military officers had been appointed till date ever since the very first appointment by General Musharraf. However, in July 2013, the PM ordered that that in future the post would stand reverted to the civilian cadre; he said and read out excerpts from the order.
He also read out from the verbatim of Defence Production Minister Rana Tanveer in the Senate on May 20, 2014, stating that after the last appointment the post will be reverted to the civilian officers of the cadre.
He said that that it appeared that these facts were concealed in the summary for the PM in October 2014 to change the rules arbitrarily.
The Additional Secretary Establishment Afzal Latif informed that the summary for amending the rules was moved by the Defence ministry directly to the PM House, and the Establishment had nothing to do with it.
This created an interesting situation as some members wondered if the PM, weakened by a sit-in, felt obliged to approve the summary by passing the laid down procedure.
After some discussion, it was decided that the summary will be provided to the members within a week.
