A parliamentary panel on Friday grilled Capital Development Authority (CDA) officials over their failure to take serious action against the officials involved in allocation of 24 bogus plots, which caused Rs270 million financial loss to the civic body.
The subcommittee of Public Accounts Committee (PAC) met here under the convenership of Member National Assembly (MNA) Mian Abdul Mannan to discuss matters related to CDA audit paras of 2016-17.
Officials of the Auditor General Pakistan (AGP) while briefing the panel said that CDA allocated 24 bogus plots in 1996 which caused Rs270 million financial loss and so far no action has been taken against the culprits.
Briefing the panel, the CDA officials said that board of directors of the authority in a meeting in the year 2000 decided to take action against the officials involved in the award of bogus plots. Responding to CDA officials' reply, convener committee Mian Abdul Manan said that the PAC has clearly directed the civic body to cancel the allocation of bogus plots, adding that the matter needs to be probed thoroughly.
Manan said that according to details collected by the PAC Secretariat, these plots were sold at multiple times.
Responding to the convener PAC, CDA officials said that the case has been sent to Federal Investigating Agency (FIA) for investigation and is under probe at present. The committee directed the FIA officials to complete the inquiry within two weeks and produce the findings of the probe to PAC so that further action could be taken. Audit officials said that two parties were involved in this crime; one allocated the plots and the other got the allocations. Audit officials further said that under which law the CDA failed to take action against the officials involved in the illegal allocation of plots. Responding to the audit objection, the CDA officials admitted that all this exercise of allocating bogus plots was illegally awarded.
Member PAC Shahida Akhtar said that allocation of plots without the involvement of CDA officials is impossible, adding that the authority even didn't take action against the people who signed the documents of allocating the plots to allotees. The CDA officials said that the plots had been allocated during 1991 to 1996 and all the officials involved were no more employees of the body, therefore no action is possible.
The convener committee asked the CDA if this was the case, why CDA board of directors regularized the plots. The CDA officials replied that the board regularized the plots after receiving penalty from the allotees. The committee members said that culprits should have been punished and now the committee will give further directions to CDA after receiving FIA investigation report.
The committee observed that unless CDA takes serious action against corrupt elements of the civic body, such cases will keep coming out regularly, therefore senior CDA officials need to take appropriate steps to stop such practices.
The committee further directed the officials to conduct transparent inquiry into the allotment of Monal Restaurant Islamabad so that no one can point finger at the state institutions.
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