ISLAMABAD, Feb 3: ISI, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, has vacated a secluded valley in the Margalla Hills, allotted to it 36 years ago to build its headquarters, in deference to law.

“Yes they have vacated the valley,” a senior official of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) confirmed to Dawn on Sunday.

Former federal secretary Roedad Khan who, as head of the Margalla Hills Society (MHS), had gone to the Supreme Court to seek the vacation, welcomed the ISI’s move.

“It is a good gesture and we are thankful for it,” said the conservationist who has been campaigning for long to preserve the natural beauty of Islamabad.

The Margalla Hills Society will develop trekking and hiking activities in the valley and establish an information centre on the fauna and flora of the Margalla region, he said.

ISI left the 64-acre Kalinger Valley in Dara Jangla area of Margalla Hills without any condition.

It was allotted the place by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1972. But the proposition to build the ISI headquarters there became problematic after military ruler Gen Ziaul Haq in 1980 declared the Margalla Hills part of a National Park Area prohibiting any sort of construction there.

However the ISI kept the allotted land in its control and agitated the issue of constructing its complex on it at various levels.

The intelligence agency reportedly wanted its office and other sensitive installations in a deserted area and considered National Park the most suitable.

A CDA document shows that the Ministry of Environment turned down its request to amend the Wild Life (Protection, Preservation and Management) Ordinance of 1979 to exclude the Kalinger Valley from the National Park Area so that ISI could build its complex.

Capital Development Authority reportedly offered alternative pieces of land, measuring 5.12 acres in Sector F-5/2 and 35 acres in Sector D-11, to ISI which it occupied but took no step to shift its headquarters from the present location on Suhrawardy Road, a prime land.

“The price of land the ISI occupies is said to be in billions,” sources in CDA said.

According to Roedad Khan the Margalla Hills Society had challenged ISI’s building plans in the Rawalpindi bench of the Lahore High Court some years ago, but the petition was dismissed.

“We have been campaigning against the illegal activities in the protected area (of Margalla) which unfortunately are continuing,” he said.

Gen Ziaul Haq declared the Margallas a protected area but violated his own action by allowing quarrying of the hills and the establishment of a cement factory in the face of strong public opposition to the project. The quarrying of the hill range for limestone and gravel is rapidly eating away Margalla Hills near Taxila.

Former Labour Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan from the Taxila constituency had told media that the lease for quarrying in the area would run out at the end of 2007 and no new lease would be granted. But the so-called “crushers” in the area can be seen as active there as ever.