Land mafia active to create another ‘Blue Area’ in Islamabad

[Lahore_Real_Estate]

NAECHS merger with Jinnah Garden?
By Ikram Junaidi

The land mafia that used Federal Employees Cooperative Housing Society (FECHS) for corruption by merging the society into Jinnah Garden is now working to make another “Blue Area” in Islamabad by merging National Assembly Employees Cooperative Housing Society (NAECHS) into Jinnah Garden.

After NAECHS merger into Jinnah Garden over two-kilometer land along the Grand Trunk (GT) Road will be declared commercial area exceeding the permissible percentage of the society. Although it seems in the interest of the society, the executives of FECHS have allegedly decided to grab the land as they have allegedly manipulated the election of society and managed to have plant their favorites in the executive body, sources told Daily Times on Sunday.

Jinnah Garden has allegedly grabbed 300 kanals of NAECHS land and has floated a proposal that NAECHS should be also merged into it, although both the societies have an unsettled issue of land, the sources alleged. They said FECHS was launched in Zone-V of federal capital about a decade ago, but its management failed to fulfil promises made to the members due to alleged corruption. Two years back circle registrar office suspended society’s management committee and constituted an administrative committee with Col ® Nazarul Islam as caretaker. The committee was tasked to carry out audit of the society, hold its elections within six months and hand over the society to the elected body. But the administrative committee did not complete both the tasks even after two years and firstly merged the society into Jinnah Garden and later held elections to plant their favorites.

The sources alleged that Nawaz Khan was the main person behind the FECHS affairs. They said Khan did all the correspondence from an office near Ayub Chowk on behalf of the society. Before elections number of files of plots were purchased to use membership as a vote due to which Khan’s nominated persons were elected. The land mafia behind all activities was so strong that although it was mentioned on the website of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) that FECHS got approval of 1,000 kanals of land, the society was doing development work on over an area of 3,000 kanals.

It was also mentioned on the CDA website that layout plan of only area of 1,000 kanals was approved and CDA had warned the public to refrain from any transaction of plots with FECHS but that the mafia kept working on the land and in the end managed to got approved the Lay Out Plan (LOP) of 2,700 kanals from CDA. They said in the past a special committee of NAECHS held annual general meeting (AGM) at Aabpara on the pretext of security issues that raised questions about transparency, as there were many disputes on the land but the management preferred not to hold meeting on society’s premises against the normal practice.

They said the proposal of Special Committee of the National Assembly (NA) Standing Committee on House and Library regarding merger of NA Employees Cooperative Housing Society (NAECHS) and Federal Employees Cooperative Housing Society (FECHS) had put a question mark on special committee members’ intentions, as the committee ignored many factors. The committee took some steps that favored the land mafia. Initially, while investigating FIA Deputy Director Mazar Ali Shah the committee assumed that whatsoever was done by FIA was wrong, but in the end the committee forwarded the case to FIA, said the sources, adding, it was purely a mandate of FIA to look into the criminal and civil matters, but the committee stopped the agency, which showed the power of the land mafia.

The land mafia is active to grab NAECHS and other land located near it, by announcing the mergers, said the sources, adding, an influential personality of the city and his brother (Khokar) were involved in land grabbing using FECHS and NAECHS names, they said.