Political expediency: Report on railway land fraud ‘dropped’

Government drops a committee report investigating a Rs25-billion leasing scam on land owned by the Pakistan Railways.

ISLAMABAD: The ruling party has given in to pressure from the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) and dropped a parliamentary committee report investigating a Rs25-billion leasing scam on land owned by the Pakistan Railways.

A PML-Q senator and a retired general, who was also a close associate of  then president General (retd) Pervez Musharraf and his minister for railways, was at the centre of this controversy.  The report into the questionable lease of the Pakistan Railways Golf Club in Lahore, involved three retired military generals, all from the Musharraf era.

A 20-member special parliamentary committee of the National Assembly formed by Speaker Dr Fehmida Mirza on April 22, 2008, investigated the lease of hundreds of acres of railways land of the Royal Palm Golf and Country Club, Lahore, to a private party. The committee members found that the then minister for railways, Lt General Javed Ashraf Qazi, along with the former secretary and chairman Railways Lt General Saeeduz Zafar, ex-general manager Railways Major General Hamid Hassan Butt and former secretary railways Khursheed Alam Khan were responsible for this dubious deal.

According to the committee, this deal caused a loss of Rs40 billion to the national exchequer, if calculated on current market rates. The committee recommended to the government to register criminal cases against all concerned and to confiscate and auction their property in a bid to recover losses.

However, before things could proceed, the ruling party received an SOS from the PML-Q leadership. They said that any discussion on this report would “spoil” the reconciliatory environment in parliament because the scam involved one of its sitting senators. The  Chaudharys of Gujrat came into action after Lt General Qazi asked for their help when the parliamentary committee report was tabled in the house three months back.

The report was tabled in the National Assembly in the first week of October 2010 but was never brought on the agenda of the house for formal discussion and subsequent recommendations for action to be taken against the key accused. Three sessions of the National Assembly have so far been held since October last year.

Official sources said that senior PML-Q leaders had played a major role in blocking formal discussion on this report after it was found that the name of one of its senators featured prominently in the report.

Sources said that the Chaudharys brought this issue before the ruling party negotiators when talks were held in recent weeks between the two sides for a new political alliance.

Lt General Qazi has become very close to the Chaudharys, say insiders.

A source reveals that Qazi accompanied the Chaudhrys to a dinner hosted for some visiting Americans in Lahore. The sources said that at the dinner, Qazi said he was not happy with General Musharraf, particularly with his policies on educational reforms. Qazi was said to have aired the views that Musharraf was “not sincere in bringing about changes in the curricula of madrassas.” Senior PML-Q leaders, who were also present at the dinner, were a bit surprised to hear Qazi’s adverse views about Musharraf.

Qazi is now being backed by the PML-Q leadership as a reward for staying in the party instead of joining hands with Musharraf who had actually introduced Qazi into politics after the 1999 military coup.

Earlier, the special parliamentary committee recommended immediate termination of the golf club’s contract, which was signed in 2001, and the appointment of a new ad-hoc committee for the interim period. It also recommended fresh lease of the Royal Palm Golf Course in an open auction so that maximum revenue could be generated for Pakistan Railways.

The parliamentary inquiry report, which took more than two years to complete, had revealed that the contract was achieved through fraud, deception and misrepresentation. The parliamentary inquiry team was headed by MNA Nadeem Afzal Chann and included Tariq Tarar, Tariq Shabbir, Nasir Ali Shah, Nauman Islam Sheikh, Fauzia Wahab, Noor Alam Khan, Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, Abid Sher Ali, Raja Mohammad Asad Khan, Abdul Majeed Khanan Khail, Marvi Memon, Engineer Shaukat Ullah, Gulam Murtaza Khan Jatoi, Iqbal Mohammad Khan and the sitting railways minister.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 9^th, 2011.