ISLAMABAD: Despite Islamabad High Court (IHC)’s order issued in 2020, the chronic issue of alleged illegal upgradation of employees of Capital Development Authority (CDA) is still undecided. The court had directed the CDA to decide the chronic cases within six months.

During the tenures of Imtiaz Inayat Elahi and mainly during the chairmanship of Farkhand Iqbal from 2010 to 2012, the CDA had promoted hundreds of employees through so-called upgradation bypassing seniority of a large number of eligible ones.

According to one of the official inquiries, the CDA made the upgradation and promotion on pick and choose basis benefiting some employees over others.

Interestingly, the matter was dragged in various committees since 2012 and also placed before the CDA board several times, but to no avail.

In 2020, after forming a number of inquiry committees, the CDA declared the upgradation of 43 officials illegal and de-notified them.

However, after suspending the CDA’s orders, the IHC directed the civic agency to decide the matter in six months after giving the opportunity of hearing to the officials. Since then, sources said, no serious effort has been made to decide the matter to resolve pending promotion cases of other eligible officials.

In 2021, the CDA board had formed a subcommittee to look into the issue, but the matter could not be resolved. Then in January last year, another committee was formed headed by private member of the CDA board, Dr Mohammad Ali, and comprising member finance and admin. However, this committee too has not finalised its recommendation.

Meanwhile, the matter was also discussed in a CDA board meeting in December 2023, which directed the committee to finalise its work in three months, but so far the matter is still undecided.

“Those who deserved promotion and were given it without following rules and regulations, their promotion should be declared legal to resolve this issue and those who were given many high-step promotions bypassing hundreds of other employees, their upgradation should be de-notified for the sake of justice,” said an official of CDA.

He said lingering the case was hampering promotions of a larger number of other employees, as after 2014 almost no promotion has been made in those cadres where the out-of-turn promotions were made in 2012.

In 2019, an inquiry committee looking into cases of upgrading and changing of cadres had revealed that most of the officials whose cases were examined had illegally been upgraded.

The committee in its report submitted to the then CDA chairman Amer Ali Ahmed had recommended de-notifying the illegally upgraded/re-designated cadres.

The report, (available with Dawn) states: “The committee has examined each individual case separately and given marks. The committee endorsed the previous committees’ findings in most of the cases. This committee also concluded that apart from a few cases majority of employees had been upgraded/re-designated or allowed cadre change illegally in violation of preconditions defined by the Honorable Supreme Court of Pakistan and the procedure laid down in the CDA Employees Service Regulations 1992.’

The report had pointed out that upgradations were made on pick and choose basis benefiting some employees over others, which was a clear violation of the principles laid down in the apex court judgement, it added.

Meanwhile, IHC Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani in 2020 deciding petitions of the demoted officers directed the civic agency to complete the composition of its board of directors by inducting members in accordance with the CDA ordinance and then decide the representation of the demoted officers. The court had set a six-month deadline for implementation of the directions which has not been decided by the CDA.

In 2017, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) had registered a criminal case against 34 officials whose upgradation and subsequent promotion were carried out in violation of the CDA rules and regulations. But later the FIR was quashed as the case did not fall in the domain of criminal offence.

An officer of the CDA speaking to Dawn, however, said the issue was going to be settled soon as the inquiry committee headed by Dr Mohammad Ali had already conducted several meetings and now the inquiry was heading towards conclusion.

Published in Dawn, February 28th, 2024