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Tuesday March 19, 2024

Slippery and sloppy slap down anti-corruption campaign in Punjab

By Our Correspondent
February 22, 2019

Punjab seems to be losing the battle against corruption with its executive and political leadership unwilling to take bolder steps to achieve the prime minister’s agenda to free the country of the devouring sharks.

Through the ages in our country, the corrupt business and political classes have managed to weaken the resolve of the senior political leadership to fight the menace. With varying degrees of intent and commitments, Nawaz, Musharraf, Zia could not sustain the long battle and same looks set to be the fate for Imran. None have so far carried the fight beyond the limits of political convenience and often as a tactical tool to create political space, which however does not discount the need to remove this very existential threat that has rendered the country’s resources hollow.

However, such battles cannot be won without a strongly committed bureaucracy and it looks at least at this point of time the Punjab bureaucracy is hand in glove with the corrupt, easing out the system for them. Imran knows of this too; he has warned the PAS and the PSP groups of bureaucracy against becoming partisan.

Under Imran, the Anti Corruption Establishment, Punjab (ACE) was encouraged to take on the more substantive and the systemic forms of corruption. But things needed to be fixed from scratch. For years the ACE, Punjab like other sister organisations across the country have served the political-bureaucratic complex to witch hunt and arm twist the rivals and for that it was always headed and managed at the executive level by ‘officers who had little to do with investigation’.

The prime minister handpicked an untainted BPS 22 officer, Hussain Asghar, to lead the organization, redesign the charter to recover the precious state land from the very influential and powerful real estate mafia and recover revenues. Hussain prepared a draft law to resurrect the anti graft arm of the provincial government into an independent and effective “free from political bureaucratic controls, by doing away with the mandatory permissions from the chief minister and the chief secretary” before proceeding for any inquiry, investigation, lodging FIR and eventual filing case in a court of law. As expected an unfettered independence could not have been granted, it was never tabled in the provincial assembly. The DG ACE approached the Supreme Court to help overcome the problem. As luck would have it ex CJP Saqib Nisar unfettered the DG ACE allowing him to “proceed against crimes against the consolidated fund and the assets of the state including the stand land.”

It is these two big areas where the biggest corruption takes place occupying the state land and swindling with the state revenues in myriad of ways, none of which is possible without the facilitating role of the bureaucrats assigned the role of guardians. With the backing of the Supreme Court, From November 2018 to Jan 2019, Hussain Asghar was instrumental in recovering Rs 55 billion, and land, compared to 1.5 bn in 2016-2017, signifying a concerted state action can set things moving at least towards the right direction. This unruffled feathers of many and the “chief secretary appealed against the Supreme Court’s order.”

The Punjab government expelled Hussain Asghar from the ACE when he moved to recover state land in South Punjab, Faisalabad, Sargodha and Rawalpindi and the payment of arrears and taxes from the cartel of PTI-PML-N MPs and businessmen. It was only on the orders of the prime minister that he was brought back to continue the work after a fortnight.

In Lahore, owners of marriage halls, petrol pumps rose in protest against recovery of revised taxes, unpaid arrears and for warnings and actions against building marquee in violation of the master plan, original design or plan or by encroaching the amenity land and the last but not the least illegal conversion of residential plots to commercial category.

The ACE found the involvement of several high-ups of the Lahore municipality in granting the leeway causing loss to the tune of millions to the provincial kitty, and that annoyed the mayor Mubashir Javed and he challenged the jurisdiction of the ACE in the Supreme Court, “to pursue revenue losses instead of complaints against government officers.” The mayor is not alone and is joined by DG LDA.

There is an FIRs filed against DG LDA Amna Imran and several against the department she leads. The first FIR against the DG LDA was about illegally allowing ‘four kanals’ of government land to be encroached for providing access roads to a residential scheme. The Dream Housing Society is located on a side of the Raiwind Road and needed access roads. It was desperately looking for solutions to get returns on its investment. The LDA came to the rescue multiplying the value of the real estate overnight. The permission was unauthorized, in stark violations of the rules of the Govt of Punjab. As the issue was highlighted in the media and questions were raised, “the smart top officers of the LDA withdrew the permission,” but not before the access roads were built on the state land and they continue to remain in use even today.

The LDA is well known for its largesse helping many in need. One fine morning, the LDA decided to build a cricket stadium on the amenity plots of the Jubilee Town, Lahore “without inviting tenders and against the original plan defined for the scheme.” The only legal complication was that the master plan or the housing plan of a society could not be altered without the approval of the board headed by the chief minister and the “LDA went solo on the back of the board.” To secure, the stadium the LDA began building a boundary wall by encroaching on the roads leading to the market and the residential areas. The ACE, moved against both the schemes in time and managed to stop the boundary wall half way. The LDA’s benevolence remains unbounded. While a lot of anti encroachment action is taking place across Pakistan, the LDA has done very little to clean up the mess from Lahore.

The infamous Khokar Palace of Lahore is spread over 100 kanals, encroaching over 40 kanals of prime Punjab government land. The former CJP, Saqib Nisar, had ordered to demolish the encroached land or recover dues according to the prevailing market rates if the superstructures built there could be ‘legally’ regularized. Here again the compliance was only nominal, only a very little part of the Palace was pulled down. Employing misrepresented, twisted facts, both the DG LDA and the Mayor of Lahore have brought the DG Anti Corruption Establishment (ACE), Punjab to the dock for “acting beyond its jurisdiction.” Interestingly, but not unexpectedly the law officer of the Punjab government, the additional advocate general, after the chief secretary, has also moved in to challenge the jurisdiction, granted by the Supreme Court. First it was the chief secretary who had gone in appeal against the former CJP’s order, making it a battle to clip the wings of the ACE from proceeding against crimes against the consolidated fund and the assets of the state. The slippery and the sloppy have combined to slap down the prime minister’s vision of corruption free Pakistan, primarily coming from the political-executive branch of the Punjab government who remain out of Imran’s control. What happens next would determine the direction of the Naya Pakistan.