Plan to occupy plots worth billions in cooperative societies foiled

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court has foiled a plan to illegally occupy plots worth billions of rupees in cooperative societies and suspended the registrar of cooperative societies.

The court has also suspended a decision to supersede more than 70 societies. It has ordered the immediate removal of the registrar of cooperative societies and declared the appointment of Grade 18 Registrar Zameer Abbasi to Grade 19 null and void.

The high court stated that the position of registrar of societies is a Grade 19 post and cannot be filled by a Grade 18 officer.

The petitioner’s lawyer alleged in his application that Zameer Abbasi, upon taking office, appointed unrelated individuals to positions within the cooperative societies, besides misusing his position by appointing more than 70 illegal registrars.

Muhammad Bilal, president of the Cooperative Housing Society Federation, told Daily Jang that heavy sums were being taken to appoint administrators to Karachi’s cooperative societies to occupy valuable plots worth millions. He said that due to the appointment of administrators and superseding of societies in Sindh, there had been a fraud of 10 billion rupees.

Due to the decision of the registrar of cooperative societies, the Sindh Building Control Authority has stopped approving the map plans of 70 societies.

The registrar of cooperative societies was allegedly violating the law by appointing private individuals as administrators. None of the administrators are from Karachi; they are allegedly selling valuable and profitable plots in important and populated societies. It was further alleged that most administrators have hired thugs who seize valuable plots immediately upon their appointments.

He stated that the decisions of the registrar of cooperative societies have affected 5,000 members.

According to the law, the administrator of societies can only be an employee of the department, but they have brought people from a political party in rural Sindh and appointed them as administrators. These administrators created multiple files for valuable plots, leased important and valuable plots, and caused hundreds of cases to reach the courts. He mentioned that a protest was held in front of the Karachi Press Club a few days ago.

On the other hand, the stance of the registrar of cooperative societies of Sindh was that most societies had come under the control of the land mafia, and their elections were also fraudulent. Now a crackdown has been started against them, so these mafia people are creating a commotion, according to the registrar. However, when an attempt was made to contact Zameer Abbasi this evening, he initially did not attend the phone call and later turned his phone off.