The Supreme Court on Saturday directed the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to recover salaries received by former director general of Lahore Development Authority (LDA) Ahad Cheema being chief executive officer of Bhikki Power Plant over and above his regular salary. The NAB had brought Cheema from jail on the direction of Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar in a case related to LDA-City housing scheme. Cheema is an under-trial prisoner of the bureau for his involvement in Ashiyana-i-Iqbal Housing Scheme scam.
The Chief Justice reprimanded Cheema for misusing public exchequer for development schemes including Orange Line Metro Train project and also showed displeasure with the NAB for its poor investigation in the case. "I can tell you they all will be freed soon. Solving a white-collar crime is not an easy task," the chief justice reminded the counsel of the NAB. To a court's query, Cheema explained that the LDA had decided to outsource acquisition of the land for the housing scheme to avoid litigation.
He said a big housing scheme of the authority namely LDA Avenue-I had not been accomplished so far due to litigation despite the lapse of decades. He said the government adopted the idea of public-private partnership from the model of DHA. Cheema claimed that the process of land acquisition was going smoothly till the intervention by the NAB.
Chief Justice however, snubbed Cheema and said such kind of briefings would work before a chief minister but not in the court. When asked, Cheema said he was getting Rs 1.4 million monthly salary as CEO of Bhikki power plant whereas his regular salary was around Rs 100,000. To justify his salary, he said the government had made a policy to hire competent officials on market-based salaries. Chief Justice however observed that the beneficiaries of the market-based salaries were the real brain behind the discriminatory policy.
"Why you have not returned the excessive salary yet while other officers have already surrendered theirs as per the court's order," the CJP asked Cheema. "I have no money. And I have not been informed about such order in jail," Cheema replied and also complained about his 'deteriorating' health in the jail. At this, Chief Justice directed the NAB to recover the excessive salaries from Cheema by confiscating his properties if he did not have cash.
Meanwhile, the court directed LDA Director General and lawyers of three development companies/partners to reach a solution to meet deficiency of the land to complete the LDA-City housing scheme. Lawyers of Urban developers, Maymar Housing and Pak-Estate undertook that they were ready to acquire the required land for the LDA. Urban's counsel Ahsan Bhoon said, if court ordered, his client was ready to acquire all deficient land measuring 20,000 kanals for whole project.
Chief Justice Nisar observed that the prime concern of the court was to protect the rights of those individuals who bought files of the LDA-City but never got plots and adjourned the proceedings to December 29.
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