Bidders fight at parking stand auction

LAHORE: Multan Road fruit and vegetable market became a battleground as participants in a bidding process for parking stand scuffled. Several alleged that they were beaten up and deprived of bidding documents in the presence of senior officials.

The bidding process was held here and the tender was awarded to one Zulfiqar for Rs252,000 per month, said Raheela, Secretary Market Committee. She, however, denied any fighting or depriving the participants of bid documents and claimed that these were mere allegations.

On the other hand, several participants filed written applications to the Deputy Commissioner Lahore and AC City regarding the incident. As per one such letter written by Farooq and Co addressed to DC Lahore with subject “Beating and snatching of auction paper during auction of parking stand vegetable and fruit market, Multan Road.” It stated that an incident of beating and snatching of auction papers from him within office premises of market committee Multan Road during the scheduled auction of parking stand. Umer Farooq, owner of the company, in his letter, said that the staff of market committee and the current contractor and his 40 to 50 men first pressurised him for not taking part in the auction.

“On observing that I am not willing to give them the tender papers, they started beating me on the office premises. No one from the office of Market Committee helped me, which showed that they were also part of the whole game. They snatched tender documents from me,” he alleged in his letter. In the letter, he further stated that the auction should be cancelled immediately so that this mafia could be exposed and the staff should be asked about such a big incident on the office premises and not informing the law officials and authorities concerned. Sources in DC Office claimed that several other participants also filed similar applications regarding the incident. The scribe tried to contact DC Lahore to get his official version over the incident but he didn’t attend the phone.

Spokesperson for DC Lahore Imran Maqbool; however, said that all the applications regarding the incident would be treated as per law.