Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court of Pakistan set aside the orders of the IHC to freeze the accounts of the CDA over non-payment of compensation to the land affected persons.

Islamabad High Court (IHC) froze the accounts of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) on 21 December 2016, when a local named Azhar Shaheen was denied money for a piece of land that he owned.

The high court halted all development projects until payment to the locals. It was also reported that during the hearing, Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddique remarked that an influential person is paid around Rs2.5 billion within a day while there are no funds for the locals.

Although like the past, the court did not bar the civic body from paying salaries of its employees, but stopped the payments of all development projects and banned other expenditures, which created problems for the treasury directorate of the CDA to run the affairs.

Sources briefed that several projects were delayed due to non-payments of sums to the contractors while the decision also added a bad reputation of the civic body in the market.

However, the Supreme Court of Pakistan on Monday set aside an order passed by the Islamabad High Court in this regard while hearing the writ petition filed by the CDA.

When contacted the Member Finance CDA Dr. Fahad Aziz, confirmed the development and said: “Although, I don’t have the written orders yet, but I was informed that the apex court ordered to open the accounts of the CDA.”

An insider of the finance wing said: “We were under a lot of pressure from contractors especially who are executing small projects.” He said further: “It was decided by the member finance to first release funds to small contractors then for big projects on humanitarian grounds.” The civic agency challenged the order of the High Court contending that it was facing the worst financial crunch in addition to an argument that the order of the high court is also against the spirit of law.

The legal counsel representing the CDA in this case, Sardar Muhammad Aslam while talking to Daily Times said: “There was no application filed by any aggrieved party to freeze the accounts of the civic body, but the high court itself decided to freeze CDA’s accounts which was against the rules as only the supreme court can take suo Moto action not any high court.”

He further explained: “The high court has also issued orders without giving CDA a proper chance of presenting its view point.”

“The supreme court set aside IHC’s order and issued notices to parties to clarify the position,” Mr. Sardar added. It is not the first time that CDA’s account has been seized, as once in 2012, the accounts of the civic body were also attached by the same judge, which was detached later by a division bench of the high court.

Few days before while briefing a subcommittee of the National Assembly’s Committee on Government Assurance, the Member Planning and Design CDA said: “The authority has to pay around 9 billion rupees, but we don’t have the funds to release payments while several legalities are also involved in payments.”