Ex-secretary food levels Serious allegations against PM’s inquiry team members

LAHORE: Former secretary food Punjab, Naseem Sadiq, has levelled serious allegations against members of PM’s inquiry committee on wheat crisis, terming the content against him factually wrong.

''The unbelievable level of contortion (distortion), professional incompetence and reckless empirically expressed vide the said report to misled the whole investigation process, initiated to thrash out the wheat flour controversy on the desire of the prime minister, the highest executive authority of the country, is criminally cognizable.

“I shall prove all my assertions with undeniable documentary evidence, additionally corroborated from the glaring contradictions, popping up throughout the report, itself creating an irrefutable signature of loaded suggestions to deflect the attention away from the tangible crime that should have been quantified in no unequivocal terms.

“But, the report conveniently skipped by creating smoke screen in the form of assembly line of scapegoat to give benefit to the mafia involved in the flour crisis,'' he wrote to chief secretary Punjab in a strongly worded letter.

Instead, the actual crisis, which if allowed to go unchecked at this juncture, will again resurface to play havoc on an unprecedented scale, he warned.

The trajectory in the report regarding deflection, diversion and contortion made to pull attention away from flour crisis to some imaginary failure of wheat procurement campaign in the Punjab indicates that it has been dictated by the mafia and handed over to the committee for affixing their signatures.

The report prepared for the highest office of the country with such recklessness and professional dishonesty itself raises many questions regarding the competency and integrity of committee members and the conclusion drawn based on factually wrong and misleading information, he added.

The report throughout its discourse heavily resorted to self-contradictions, deliberate inconsistency, assumptions and presumptions, in preference of hardcore facts and figure, which may be exposed at length at any fora.

Sadiq also described what he called a highly disturbing personal experience that brought him the wrath of two of the committee members, deputy director general of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), in particular. During his posting as commissioner DG Khan, he said he allotted a designated residence to an honourable judge of special anti-corruption court, which was in illegal possession of a director IB, who had been transferred from there.

“I was pressurised to the highest possible level even through combined efforts of certain allied forces as well so much so that the said member of the inquiry committee, to my utter shock and dismay, demanded me to withdraw the said allotment order, saying, “Mujhe allotment letter subah tak chahye” [I want the allotment letter till morning]. “I obviously refused it being against the law/rules and professional ethics.”

The former secretary food requested the chief secretary to take up the matter with the authority and hold a judicial inquiry to ascertain the conduct of the inquiry committee and the way they tried to mislead the highest executive authority of the country with such a brazen audacity besides not fulfilling the tasks assigned to them i.e. unearthing the flour mafia and fixing of responsibility thereof.

Naseem Sadiq also claimed that he was not responsible for delay in achieving the procurement target as he was appointed when the buying campaign had already been started. He said that there had been no relation between wheat procurement and flour crisis as Punjab had sufficient stocks of wheat.

About not achieving the procurement target, he said there was no precedent that such a massive target was achieved in the last five years. He said wheat procurement drive was a success and high-ups of the provincial government duly acknowledged the fact on various occasions. He regretted that he was transferred in just two months when he had initiated an inquiry into various scandals involving pilferage of wheat, bogus export, etc.