Accounting for the accountability bureau

While one notice asks NAB for help, the other asks it to release property

RAWALPINDI: National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has received two notices relating to the illegal encroachment of land. Whereas one notice asks NAB for help, the other asks NAB to release their property.

The administration of Rawalpindi Medical College (RMC) has filed a notice to NAB for the eviction of their land. Media Coordinator RMC Dr Abbas Hayat told The Express Tribune that in 1999 NAB had forcefully established four of its Accountability Courts in one the female hostel buildings. Since then the medical college administration has time and again requested NAB to vacate the lane but to no avail.

Dr Hayat added that the female student strength had increased significantly over the past decade but due to NAB’s refusal to budge, the hostilities had to live in cramped conditions. “NAB is a national body designed to bring justice while in this case they seem to be above the law,” he added.

NAB spokesperson told The Express Tribune, “We are considering different options, but we will not be vacating the building unless provided with an alternative.” He confirmed that the bureau never paid any rent to RMC for the occupation of its building, saying that since the building belonged to a government institute, the bureau was not liable to pay the rent.

In another notice, the administration of Government Commerce College, Phagwari, Satellite Town in Rawalpindi sought assistance from NAB to get its land evicted. Professor Farukh Raja, the principal, in his written request informed NAB that 22 acres of the property of the college were illegally invaded.

Raja told The Express Tribune that this land had been allotted to the college in 1982 but was encroached in 1986. The possession of the land was finally gained back through a cleanup operation in 1998, he added. “But due to the shortage of funds, the administration was unable to construct a wall around it for demarcation,” he said.

According to the principal, over the years, all 22 acres had been illegally occupied by an influential family of that area. “The encroachers plan on selling the land as residential plots and have even laid the foundations for the housing scheme,” he said.

The college administration had first approached Chief Minister (CM) Punjab Shahbaz Sharif in this regard. District Coordination Office, on directions of CM, asked Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA) to demark the land.

Even after the official declaration of the land as the college’s property by RDA, the administration in its letter to NAB, expresses helplessness in final eviction of the land.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 27^th, 2010.