A well-planned ‘trap’ has been prepared for LDA Additional Director General (ADG) Hafiz Ahsan-ul-Haq to implicate him in departmental and legal cases by the LDA top officials as a retaliatory move to teach him a lesson for exposing some mafia kingpins in an inquiry report on BoR Housing Society tragedy, which resulted in four casualties and injuries to 21 others.
The key conspirator, who is in touch with the LDA Town Planning and legal team, is active in preparing a fake ‘scandalous file’ against the ADG, in which written statements of contractual officers are being registered.
“The contractual officials are being forced to submit statements in accordance with heinous designs with the threats that if refused, their appointments stood cancelled,” a LDA senior official told Pakistan Today. As per the plan, the file will be presented to LDA DG Abdul Jabbar Shaheen on his return from a foreign tour today (Monday).
The LDA mafia started intriguing after Hafiz Ahsan spilled the beans in his inquiry report that Chief Town Planner Ch Muhammad Akram, who was also heading the Commercial, Recovery and Enforcement Directorate of Town Planning Wing, admitted in his statement before the LDA inquiry committee that he had no experience regarding building demolition.
The report said the demolition operation was ill-planned, ill-executed and grossly mishandled which resulted in the collapse of the building and caused loss of four precious human lives and injuries to 21 others. According to the report, the responsibility lay squarely on all the officers of Town Planning Wing, Engineering Wing and Directorate of Enforcement, who took part in the operation, directly or indirectly. It was just because of their negligence/inefficiency (which they committed either by omission or by commission), that the tragic incident took place.
The LDA officials, who licked the wounds on getting pinpointed by Hafiz Ahsan in the report some months back, have already made first onslaught against him by sealing his house on commercialisation issue last month.
As per information available to Pakistan Today, the LDA Commercialisation Wing sealed a residence 445/G-4 situated at Doctors’ Hospital Road in Johar Town for being used commercially, allegedly by the ADG. The information disclosed that the said road fell in Category A, declared commercialised already by the LDA administration by laying down specific rules.
Sources said the Rule 62 and all its sections never indicated sealing of any building flanking road declared commercial. The information says a team, headed by LDA Director (Commercial) Faheem Chaudhry, raided his house and sealed its ground floor for being rented out to a beauty parlour without getting it commercialised by Ehsan’s wife. It further disclosed that before sealing the building, official procedure was not followed and an abrupt action, like that by “James Bond”, was taken.
The action was taken despite the fact that the LDA never served any letter to Ahsan’s wife for the payment of commercialisation fee. Meanwhile, she submitted an application on December 8, a day after the sealing on December 7, at LDA One Window Cell, pleading that she wanted to pay all commercialisation fee to get her housed unsealed.
Standard Operative Procedures (SOPs) in the case stated that the issue would be finalised in a month with instructions that survey to be done from December 8 to December 15 and final status to be intimated on January 7.
But instead of following the SOPs, the LDA magistrate issued a challan on December 21 on alleged non-payment of commercialisation fee. The proceedings started on January 2 and the LDA legal team is on full stretch to punish the ADG at any cost. Talking to Pakistan Today, Hafiz Ahsan rejected the charges and branded it an action by those whom he had held responsible for a plaza demolition in Board of Revenue Society in Johar Town. He said the officials of the LDA Commercial Wing, headed by the Town Planning Department, neither served any notice nor heard his family members prior to sealing the residence. The ADG said the LDA allotted him one-kanal plot No-445/G-4 in 1990 and he initiated construction in 2001. After completing the construction in 2005 and shifted to his the same year.”
“I rented out the ground floor of the house to a family in 2006 that stayed there till December 2008. The LDA had declared the Doctors’ Hospital Road as commercial before I started construction, but it took back its decision soon.”
“From January 2009 to March 2011, I did not rent out my house. In April, 2011, I again rented out the ground floor of the house (which I had already gifted to my wife, Tasneem Ahsan, in the beginning of January 2011) to Nikkis Beauty Parlour for Rs 37,000 per month,” he explained.
He said the time he gave house on rent to the parlour, there was a ban imposed by the LDA management on the commercialisation of new buildings in various city areas. “Despite the ban, I paid property tax worth Rs 40,000 each for the fiscal year 2010-11 and 2011-12 so that no one could raise any question.” He maintained the LDA announced its new commercialisation policy in July 2011 by declaring the aforementioned road as commercial.
Ahsan said as he did not have Rs 2.6 million to get this house commercialised and was planning to pay the amount to LDA in instalments by getting the necessary documents completed.
Sources said one month had passed since the application had been submitted for payment of commercialisation fee, but the LDA mafia had ceased the official processing in a bid to deepen conspiracy against Hafiz Ahsan. LDA Director (Commercialisation) Faheem Chaudhry denied any hostile move against the ADG, saying the LDA served notices to everyone who did not pay commercialisation fee as all were equal in the eyes of law. He said the application of Ahsan’s wife was in process and to be finalised soon. “After the payment, she is allowed to use building for commercial purposes,” he added.
