KARACHI, Feb 20: The agriculture secretary made a startling disclosure before the Public Accounts Committee of the Sindh Assembly on Friday that in 1996 his department had lost a case in the Sindh High Court regarding ownership of 40 acres of a Coconut Research Station in Korangi but did not file an appeal in the apex court.

The PAC meeting, presided over by its chairman Jam Tamachi, was considering the audit accounts of the agriculture department for the year 2004-05 when Sabhago Khan Jatoi, the agriculture secretary, disclosed that his department had misled the auditors that the Sindh High Court had decided the matter of the 40 acres Coconut Research Station in its favour. It was stated in the audit para 19 that during scrutiny of the accounts record of the director of the Sindh Horticulture Research Institute, Mirpurkhas, it was observed that 40 acres of the Coconut Research Station, Karachi, has been under encroachment for the last 20 years and no efforts were made by the department to get the land vacated from the illegal occupants.

“Inaction on the part of the department was pointed out in August 2004, but its reply was found unsatisfactory in which it was stated that the land was encroached upon by land mafia and same could not be got vacated despite a judgment of the high court in favour of the department. Reply was unsatisfactory as the department failed to mobilise government machinery to implement court’s orders,” reads the para.

The PAC chief declined the request made by the agriculture secretary to settle the para 19 and asked him as to how the department lost its case to land grabbers when it possessed the legal documents.

Mr Tamachi questioned the agriculture secretary whether his department had filed an appeal before the apex court against the high court’s judgment to which Mr Jatoi said that now the case suffered from laches.

Taking serious note of the situation, Mr Tamachi asked the secretary to inform the committee about the names of influential persons who were behind the land grabbers and the reasons for not pursuing the case.

Instead of responding to the queries, the secretary told the meeting that two parties asserting their claim to land measuring 32 acres and eight acres, respectively, went into litigation and the department also became a party and subsequently lost its case.

He said that high-rise buildings had been constructed on the plot to which Aamir Moin, a member of the PAC, said that about 80 per cent of the land in question was still vacant. He said he knew the site in question very well because it fell in his constituency.

Mr Tamachi asked the secretary to provide the case file to the PAC and directed him to conduct an inquiry against those officials who failed to discharge their duty of protecting the government property where not only coconut was grown but a compound wall was also built.

He said that he would take up the case with the governor and the chief minister to get the plot vacated from the possession of land mafia.

The PAC also refused to settle para-1 regarding non-recovery of over Rs1.1 billion which was outstanding against 31 sugar mills since 1979 on account of market fee but the department made no effort to recover the amount despite Supreme Court decisions in its favour.

Out of 20 paras, 13 were settled as the department had produced relevant record/documents justifying the use of public money to which the auditors had expressed satisfaction.

However, the other five paras whose settlement was also denied pertain to irregular expenditure on repair of vehicles (Rs4.258 million), non-deposit of the government’s revenue in its treasury (Rs 1.713 million), misclassified expenditure (Rs 0.6548 million).

While settling the paras, the PAC chief asked the secretary to get explanation from the officials concerned as to why they failed to present required documents at the time of audit inspection and if they did not possess these documents five years back, how they could submit them now.

Another PAC member, MPA Shama Mithani, asked as to why the department did not follow rules in spending public money.

Mr Tamachi also asked the secretary agriculture to seek explanation from the officials concerned for failing to produce the documents at the time of audit inspection which was carried out eight weeks after the first audit.

The agriculture secretary admitted that it was for the first time that the PAC was conducting an in-depth inquiry and assured the PAC that he would direct the officials to keep all required documents available to the auditors at the time of an audit inspection.