Highly qualified: At CDA, mud stains no bar on promotions

Grade-19 official recommended for promotion during chairman’s absence; court stays order.

ISLAMABAD:

It seems that the Capital Development Authority (CDA) is in a rush to promote one of its officers to grade 20, despite the fact his name manages to come up in almost every scam involving the agency.

The officer has, among other things, been found the key figure responsible for a number of ‘questionable’ actions pointed out by an Islamabad High Court-appointed judicial commission probing the CDA, and he has been a ‘headliner’ in around a dozen cases regarding irregularities and corrupt practices.

The officer is Ghulam Sarwar Sandhu, the Planning director general. Some CDA officials claimed to be bewildered what persuaded their bosses to forward working papers to the Cabinet Division in the absence of CDA Chairman Tahir Shahbaz, who was on an official visit to Turkey last week. In Shahbaz’s absence, the CDA member Finance was the acting chairman and seemingly tried to take full advantage of the temporary charge.

The move was delayed after Khaliqur Rehman, the Planning deputy director general, moved the court against the scheduled promotion committee proceedings by challenging Sandhu’s seniority and qualifications. A civil judge granted a stay on Monday, citing a Supreme Court verdict regarding promotion of senior officers during the caretaker set-up. Incidentally, Sandhu spent a day in jail last year after being charged with contempt during an appearance in IHC.

Khaliqur Rehman’s petition not only mentioned the irregularities committed by Sandhu, but also questions how a man appointed in grade 17 in June 2007 manages to rise all the way to grade 20 in six short years.



Documents available with The Express Tribune revealed that the post Sandhu was appointed on in 2007 did not exist previously, suggesting it had been created for him. The creation of the post — Housing Societies director —, direct recruitment without advertising (illegal in its own right), and CDA’s acceptance of his appointment, all took place on the same day — June 16, 2007.

It was the beginning of a meteoric, if inexplicable rise — as the illegally-appointed official soon became the Planning deputy DG and later Planning DG, all the while adding to a long list of court cases against him. Interestingly, for much of this time, there has been a writ petition pending with the IHC regarding the legality of his appointment as Housing Societies director.

CDA’s internal fact-finding committees have found Sandhu involved in several corruption cases, including the Diplomatic Shuttle Service project, illegal allotment of plots reserved for schools, allotment of land for the Gun and Country Club, provision of excess commercial area to private housing societies and granting permission for questionable infrastructure projects.

Some parliamentarians have openly praised Sandhu for being obliging. In March, during a Senate debate on the CDA’s refusal to issue a no-objection certificate to a housing society owned by a politician, a senator said, “When Sandhu was the planning deputy DG, all of our requests were processed in a timely fashion.”

The Supreme Court is currently hearing the Gun and Country Club case, while the others were probed by a three-judge IHC-appointed judicial commission late last year. Khaliqur Rehman told The Express Tribune that recommending Sandhu for promotion is tantamount to jeopardising the judicial proceedings which needs to be challenged.

Talking to The Express Tribune, Sandhu claimed his appointment in CDA was a lengthy process that took five months, not one day. Sandhu said his promotion case was first forwarded to the Cabinet in 2010, and after a delay, the Supreme Court decided the case in his favour. He added that he had not been named key accused in any of the cases probed by the judicial commission and that the commission had cleared his name in the Diplomatic Shuttle Service case.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 28^th, 2013.