Land compensation: Pending case resolution, IHC attaches CDA accounts

Influential person paid billions in a day but common man not compensated, judge observes

ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court has ordered to attach accounts of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) until the villagers of Bheka Syedan affected during the development of Sectors F-11 are paid compensation in cash or land.

Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of IHC ordered to submit a report detailing the total number of affected people, total area acquired, and compensation paid or pending in the instant case and other similar cases.

The court also directed to club all the matters relating to land acquisition and compensation and fixed the hearing after its winter vacation. With the attachment of accounts till further orders, the CDA needs court’s permission prior to any transaction, except for paying salaries.

The order came in response to a petition filed by some 350 villagers of Bheka Syedan – pending since 2009 – wherein the petitions had sought compensation or plots against their land. Hamid Ali Bukhari, counsel for the petitioners, said some of them were given compensation or plots, but many were still waiting.

When the case was taken up, the CDA’s legal adviser Hafiz Hifzur Rehman submitted a progress report before the court stating that the officials concerned were verifying the claims of the affected villagers, adding that some of them have been allotted developed plots in lieu of undeveloped land.

The counsel said that a commission headed by member engineering has been formed to examine the original and adverse possession of the land in question.

The CDA report also said that some of the villagers were not giving possessions of their land to the CDA, therefore the authority could not develop plots and hand them over in line with the agreement.

To this, Justice Siddiqui remarked that CDA had paid billions of rupees to an influential person in a day but the regulatory body comes up with different excuses when a common man seeks compensation.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 22^nd, 2016.