SHC summons official in land allotment case

HYDERABAD: The circuit bench of the Sindh High Court (SHC) has put Sindh Secretary Local Government, Deputy Commissioner Jamshoro and others on notice for March 28 in a case relating to alleged charges of corruption against officials for mutation of the land record.

The petitioner Abdul Shakoor Soomro, through his counsel, apprised the bench on Thursday that Municipal Committee Kotri and Town Committee Bolhari were charging undue amount of money in the name of spurious taxes.

His counsel Mumtaz Soomro maintained that the local bodies in question charge money on the mutation of land record although the subject was not under their purview.

“There is no provision in Sindh Local Government Act for such taxes,” he argued. The court directed the respondents to submit their reply at the next hearing fixed for March 28.

In another case, the circuit bench directed Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA) to advertise in the newspapers that a housing society in Hyderabad was booking the plots without obtaining approval from the SBCA.

The order came on a petition filed by Nadeem Akhtar Memon, owner of a marketing company, who dissociated himself from the project. His lawyer, Raja Jawad Sahar, apprised the court that Memon had signed a contract with the builder of that housing scheme for the project’s marketing.

However, as soon as he came to know that the project had not received No Objection Certification (NOC) from the SBCA, he stopped booking plots for that project in 2017, he added.

The lawyer complained that despite his dissociation from the project, the SBCA recently raided and sealed their marketing office in Qasimabad taluka of Hyderabad and charged them for marketing that project. He asked the SBCA to provide any documentary proof which could establish that Memon was still booking plots for that project.

Justice Iqbal Muhammad Kalhoro also asked the SBCA’s deputy director to show the concerned documents. However, the official sought time for submitting the documents proving ongoing collaboration between the builder and the marketing company at the next hearing.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 15^th, 2019.