Curious case of olive orchards: Provincial minister denies illegal allotments

Mian Iftikhar Hussain denies that Ameer Haider Khan Hoti secretly approved allotments.

Addressing a news conference here on Saturday, information minister Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Mian Iftikhar Hussain denied that the provincial chief minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti had secretly approved the allotment of olive orchards at Sangbhatti, Mardan to an unknown firm, reportedly owned by a top leader of the Awami National Party (ANP), at a throwaway price after cancelling the existing lease agreement.

He was referring to a news item published in The Express Tribune (Rs5 billion land scam leads to chief minister’s house) on Wednesday, December 15.

The provincial information minister said the-then Chief Minister Sardar Mehtab Khan had leased out 16 sites, for 12 years, to the Pakistan Oilseeds Development Board  (PODB) at a rate of Rs600 per kanal per annum in 1997. The lease expired on June 30, 2010, he added, claiming “it was not cancelled.”

Explaining his government‘s position on the issue, he said that “according to the Auqaf laws, the PODB was obliged to accept an increase of 20 per cent on the actual rate of lease which the PODB never paid to the provincial government. The provincial government asked PODB to pay Rs1,950 per kanal per annum which it refused to accept and insisted on an extension of lease for 33 years at the old rate. The provincial government did not agree since it would have been against the Auqaf laws.”

The government, therefore, leased out the land to another party at the rate of Rs1,200 per kanal per annum, after the expiry of the lease in 2010, he said. Nothing was kept secret by the provincial government while leasing out the land as the federal ministry for food and agriculture and PODB were fully involved in the correspondence with the provincial government on the issue, he added.

The lease has now been cancelled and the government has decided to lease out the land in a public auction after calling for tenders, he said. He also denied that he had apologised on behalf of the government for leasing out the plot in a non-transparent manner.

“I had actually apologised to the reporter for using non-parliamentary language during a talk-show on the subject,” he added. However, my decency was misinterpreted and my apology was taken as an admission of fault, he said.

RAUF KLASRA ADDS: This correspondent is in possession of official documents to establish that a private individual, Javed Iqbal of Rawalpindi, was quietly allotted 170 acres of land on a 20-year lease agreement. Will the honourable minister tell us who Javed Iqbal is? And if everything was legal, why was the deal cancelled? I never wrongly interpreted Mian Iftikhar Hussain’s apology. No doubt, he showed grace and moral courage to say sorry for using non-parliamentary language and I really appreciate this gesture, uncommon in this part of the world.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 19^th, 2010.