Court directs ICT to computerise revenue record

Judge annoyed over non compliance of order.

ISLAMABAD:

The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Thursday expressed serious concerns over non-compliance of court order regarding computerisation of the revenue record of the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT).

Justice Noorul Haq Qureshi on October 2012 passed a judgment directing the Chief Commissioner Islamabad, Tariq Mehmood Pirzada, to make efforts to computerise the revenue record. However, the court order was not followed.

The court in its judgement had directed the officials concerned to computerise the entire record of the ICT, and current record of the ICT was required to be scrutinised by the registrar and each page had to be signed by him with seal to stop further tampering with the record.



The court had directed that a computerised section in the department should be set up to preserve the revenue record besides maintaining daily entries.

The court had passed the judgement in a property dispute case between two groups. During the previous court proceedings, it had transpired that tehsildars, sub registrar and other officials had allegedly been found involved in forging 90 percent of the revenue record. The court had directed the chief commissioner to submit his report before the registrar office in three months.

On January 1, 2013, the chief commissioner in his reply told the court that the ICT had no funds to carry out computerisation of the revenue record.



According to him, the Ministry of Finance had not released funds to the ICT.

During the hearing on Wednesday, Secretary Finance Abdul Wajid Rana said that his ministry was not aware of any direction regarding computerisation of the revenue record. However, he assured the court that he would expedite the process of releasing fund to the ICT as soon as the court order was received.

Meanwhile, Pirzada assured the court that he would prepare PC-1 and expedite the process.

Justice Qureshi directed the chief commissioner to ensure the computerisation of the revenue record at the earliest.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 8^th, 2013.