ISLAMABAD: The city managers are apparently looking unwilling to take possession of precious lands from illegal occupants as the Capital Development Authority (CDA) has no modus operandi to undo its own policy of beautification and landscaping 2006. It is no hidden secret anymore that the civic body can only enforce its rules and regulations on poor people whereas it seems spineless while taking action against the powerful elite. The CDA board in its meeting held on May 25, 2006, had decided to give permission to the general public for the beautification of lands adjacent to their houses through gardening and plantation on purely temporary basis. It is pertinent to mention here that such approvals clearly include that nobody can change the public access of the beautified plot, which means that the land being beautified cannot be used as a personal lawn and the same would be available for the whole community. But, contrary to the essence of this decision, these plots are converted into personal lawns and in many cases the adjacent house holders have erected fences to restrict the entry of the public — which is against the approval itself. The said approvals were being used to favour the political elite ranging from top businessmen, influential politicians and bureaucrats. Hundreds of plots were grabbed by the aforementioned class by using this approval whereas in some case they even did not bother to ask CDA for approval. Keeping the continuous loss and misuse of state land by individuals, the CDA board revoked its own decision on April 28, 2016, and cancelled all the approvals for beatification; whereas, the directorate of Urban Planning had also published a public notice in the national dailies to inform the masses regarding the cancellation of these approvals. Although, the Authority has reversed its decision, but failed to practically implement it on the ground as they it does not have any exit plan when the said decision was conceived in 2006. Even, the law creates rights in such cases under ‘Tort’ when anybody uninterruptedly enjoys any right for a specific span of time in any land adjacent to his own property i.e. right of the way, right of air etc. As for instance, the civic body had failed to auction 17 residential plots from this category, as the Authority faced resistance. The occupants moved to the court and obtained a stay order from the court against the CDA. Most importantly, the relevant formations of the civic body instead of making a suitable policy to retrieve these plots are involved in shifting the burden on each other. A Deputy Director of the Enforcement Wing, Ammad-ud-Din while talking to Daily Times has said: “We have asked a number of times to the Urban Planning Directorate to provide us with the details of such illegal occupants and we wrote several letters to the Director Urban Planning in this regard.” He said further: “The Enforcement Directorate can’t take the action for itself, but we are a force to assist at the request of other formations.” On the other hand when contacted, the Director Urban Planning, Ejaz Ahmed Shaikh said: “We had already communicated the Enforcement Directorate for the vacation of all encroached plots on July 1, 2016 in general and now it is the responsibility of the Enforcement Wing to launch a comprehensive operation against the encroachers.” Although, the illegal possessors of such plots belong to the high level and officers of the Authority are unwilling to take any risk, but it is the need of hour to take prompt steps, otherwise the land worth billions would become irretrievable on the part of the CDA. When contacted the spokesperson of the CDA, Malik Saleem Akhtar, said: “The civic body believes in the enforcement of law across the board and soon an action would be taken in this regard.”