LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Friday suspended appointment of chairmen of Board of Directors (BoD) of six development authorities in Punjab allegedly made on political consideration.

An overseas Pakistani namely Yasir Chaudhry had challenged the impugned appointments of the chairmen of BoDs of the development authorities under a notification of the Punjab Housing and Urban Development Department issued on Oct 4, 2018.

The respondent chairmen are Arif Abbasi of the Rawalpindi Development Authority, Rana Jabbar of the Multan Development Authority, Mumtaz Ahmad Kahloo of the Sargodha Development Authority, Dr Asad Moazam of the Faisalabad Development Authority, Amir Rehman of the Gujranwala Development Authority and Amir Malik of the Bahawalpur Development Authority.

Advocates Zeeshan Mirza and Zaheer Abbas Sheikh represented the petitioner and pleaded that all the impugned appointments had been made on the basis of political grounds and nepotism.

They said the respondents did not possess any qualification required to hold such important and specific offices nor under any law could they be nominated as chairmen of the authorities’ BoDs.

The lawyers pointed out that all respondents were either candidates or elected parliamentarians in past elections. They said the respondents had been wasting public funds unlawfully for their own political activism. They also questioned the legitimacy of the BoDs of the development authorities, saying the Punjab Development of Cities Act 1976 did not provide for establishment of any such boards and their chairmen.

The counsel contended that the appointment of the respondents without any competition, contest, legislation and qualification was a worst example to smash the public funds and mandate. They asked the court to set aside the impugned notification issued by the secretary housing department for being illegal.

However, Justice Farrukh Irfan Khan suspended the impugned notification and sought a reply from the provincial government by March 14.

Published in Dawn, January 26th, 2019