Under the blessings of the so-called National Reconciliation Ordinance, cases against former Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao in different courts, including the one relating to Islamabad New City scam have been disposed of. As expected, affectees of the "dream project" who had deposited their hard-earned money to get a plot in the scheme have been totally ignored in terms of compensation or relief. The INC project was launched by the government in 1995, with the tall claims of developing a dream city. Besides releasing full-page advertisements to newspapers, circulars were dispatched to government offices to motivate their employees to invest their hard earned money in this 'gigantic' dream city. The project had two phases - one was dealt by the National Housing Authority and the second by the Capital Development Authority. Total number of people that applied in both phases of the project was stated to be over 5,000. The money deposited with the NHA was Rs300 million and that with the CDA was Rs162 million. The caretaker government of 1996 declared the INC to be a fake project and dissolved the executing agencies M. G. Hertz and Asia Challenge Investment. The CDA reimbursed the money to the applicants, but those who had deposited the money with the NHA have been running from pillar to post for the last 12 years. The NHA has no answer where the amount was utilized. However, after a long time, the housing ministry confessed in 2003 that a sum of Rs 300m deposited with the NHA by the applicants, was misappropriated by officials of the authority. -AMENAH AROOJ, Islamabad, via e-mail, July 5.