Islamabad - The Islamabad High Court yesterday reserved its verdict in a petition challenging auction of three plots located at Blue Area, Murree Road and sector E-11, which the CDA auctioned on November 16 and 17, 2015, for construction of two 5-star and one 3-star hotels.
A single bench of IHC comprising Justice Aamer Farooq reserved the decision after Capital Development Authority’s (CDA) counsel concluded his arguments over maintainability of the petition.
A petitioner Hafiz Arfat Ahmad Ch had challenged this auction before the court and had adopted before the court that the whole activity was illegal and unlawful, as CDA for the said plots has prescribed a floor area ratio (FAR) by 1:12 whereas for the several other buildings in Blue Area the aforesaid ratio was either 1:4 or 1:5. The FAR is the ratio of a building’s total floor area (gross floor area) to the size of the piece of land upon which it is built.
Moreover CDA in its advertisement published in the national press did not mention what it described in the brochures that the plot owner could use 20 per cent area of the land for commercial usage.
In his petition, Hafiz Arfat had nominated CDA through its chairman and director estate management (DEM) as respondents.
He alleged in the petition that the CDA illegally and unlawfully initiated auction process in collusion with some blue-eyed party/groups. The entire activity is in sheer breach of the law laid down by the Supreme Court in Siza Food commonly known as Macdonald case and Islamabad Land Disposal Regulations (LDR) 2005.
The petitioner claimed that the process initiated by the CDA would incur huge loss to the public exchequer, besides severely damaging the public interest.
The counsel for CDA Kashif Ali Malik Advocate had argued while responding to these objections that the process for the said auction was initiated in a transparent manner and in accordance with the applicable law and regulations. The CDA is the custodian of state land; therefore it must account for all its transactions.
However, Advocate Malik contended before the court that the petitioner has not ‘locus standi’ or being directly aggrieved. This is not public interest litigation and interestingly the petitioner lawyer filed this matter the same day when this ad was published.
The CDA’s counsel informed the court that the civic body has spent huge amount of the money on the advertisement of this auction and the litigation has caused huge loss to CDA.