ISLAMABAD, July 17: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Wednesday annulled the decade-old policy introduced by former premier Shaukat Aziz which made BPS-22 officers of the federal government eligible for allotment of residential plots measuring one kanal in the federal capital.
A senior government official of the prime minister office, privy to the development, told Dawn that despite strong resistance from the federal bureaucracy, the government had decided to do away with this policy.
“From today onwards, no federal secretary will be allotted a plot under this scheme as the prime minister has agreed in principle to cancel it,” said the official.
Shaukat Aziz had approved of the special “assistance package for BPS-22 officers” under which officers were given one kanal residential plots in addition to the quota reserved for employees of the federal government.
As a result, almost every retiring federal secretary would receive two residential plots in Islamabad.
Since then, the scheme had attracted flak from officers of the provincial governments and those public sector entities which did not benefit from it.
Under the same package, a 20 per cent increase in the salaries of federal secretaries was also awarded.
The issue, it may be recalled here, had been discussed in the previous Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the National Assembly.
The PAC, in December last year, had recommended the then prime minister Raja Parvez Ashraf to annul the policy, but its recommendations never got translated into action.
Later on, it emerged that the PAC secretariat, allegedly under pressure from certain quarters, had failed to pass their recommendations to the prime minister office for implementation.
The new National Assembly speaker, Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, has already initiated an inquiry into this deliberate attempt of ignoring PAC recommendations.
The PAC had also recommended the government to refrain from awarding plots to bureaucrats who worked in the Capital Development Authority (CDA) on deputation.
As of December 2012, 236 people, including 21 judges of the superior courts, benefited from this scheme while 63 cases were pending.
Since then, efforts were made to allot as many plots to federal secretaries as possible, but due to unavailability of land, the secretaries have been deprived of precious residential plots in Islamabad.
The issue of special plots first came to the limelight in September 2009, when former Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, in one go, promoted 54 officers to BPS-22, making them eligible for plots under this scheme.
Although, the Supreme Court, in response to a petition, prevented the promotion of these officers for the time being, the officers were later promoted to BPS-22 and benefited from the scheme.
These officers include former principal secretary to the prime minister and incumbent secretary economic affairs division, Nargis Sethi; former CDA chairman and current secretary Capital Administration and Development Imtiaz Inayat Elahi; former Secretary Information and Broadcasting Mansoor Sohail and former Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) chairman Sohail Ahmed.
Furthermore, former CDA chairman Kamran Lashari, Permanent representation to New York Masood Khan, former federal secretary statistics division Asif Bajwa, former federal secretary information technology Naguibullah Malik and former Motorway Police Inspector General Wasim Kausar are also included in the list.
Judges of the superior courts also got plots under this policy.
The list includes names of former chief justice of Supreme Court Abdul Hameed Dogar, former judge Mian Shakirullah Jan, current Justice Tassaduq Hussain Gilani (who is expected to become the next chief justice) and Justice Nasirul Mulk.
Retired Supreme Court judges who benefited from this scheme include Mansoor Ahmad, Mohammad Nawaz Abbasi, Faqir Mohammad Khokhar, Mohammad Javaid Buttar, Syed Saeed Ashhad, Sardar Mohammad Raza Khan, Javed Iqbal, Khalil-ur-Rehman Ramday, Falak Sher, Syed Jamshed Ali, Raja Fayyaz Ahmed, Ghulam Rabbani, Chaudhry Ijaz Ahmed, Mohammad Sair Ali and Syed Zahid Hussain.