PESHAWAR: A Peshawar High Court bench has ordered cancellation of all out-of-turn allotments of official residences to government employees since 2011 and directed the provincial government to constitute a committee for their allotments in accordance with the law.

Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth and Justice Ijaz Anwar declared the out-of-turn allotments as illegal and unlawful except to the retired or deceased employees, offspring and living spouse and designated houses for the judges of the superior judiciary.

In its detailed judgment related to several writ petitions filed by different government servants against out-of-turn allotments of government residences, the bench directed the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief secretary and secretary administration to constitute a committee consisting of four BPS-19/ 20 officers for allotment to all civil servants but in accordance with the law and the rules, on the basis of seniority, to be determined from the date of application for allotment, category wise, within a period of one month, positively.

Asks govt to form panel for fresh allotments in line with the law

Meanwhile, the bench however asked the government not to evict its employees given houses out of turn until the committee decides their cases.

It added that the decision of the committee should be implemented and allottees given houses out of turn should be dispossessed and possession of their houses should be handed over to the deserving allottees within a period of one month thereafter.

The bench, which had disposed of different writ petitions on Sept 20, has released the detailed judgment in the case.

The petitioners had claimed that despite they being higher on the seniority list prepared for allotment of government quarters, they had been ignored for the last many years and instead quarters were allotted on basis of favouritism and nepotism.

One of the petitioners, Mohammad Farman Ali, who is an assistant in the Provincial Assembly, claimed that his juniors were allotted quarters while he was ignored. He stated that he had applied for government residential accommodation in May 1997 and was placed at serial No. 1582 of the waiting list. He had named six officials stating that they were junior to him but were allotted official residences.

The court ruled that the additional advocate general along with departmental representatives including the Estate officer failed to show any reasonable, justified and legal justification for allotting an accommodation to the allotted one out of turn.

The bench observed that in the relevant rules, which were in vogue since 1980, only “out of turn” allotment is permissible to the retired/ deceased employee’s sons/ daughters/ spouse, who are in service.

“The data so provided in all the connected writ petitions reflects that ‘out of turn’ allotments have been made on the recommendations of political influential as well as the sitting government and bureaucracy which are not denied by the AAG,” the bench observed.

The court ruled that the public functionaries had to reinforce good governance, observe rules strictly and adhere to rule of law in public service.

It added that the public functionaries were not obliged to follow illegal orders of higher authorities. The bench observed that the phrase used by the concerned authorities, while allotting the residential accommodation under the rules, “out of turn” has created problems rather nuisance in the system.

Published in Dawn, October 11th, 2017