R3 saga: Sidelined officer dubs minority inquiry report as unsubstantiated

ISLAMABAD: A senior official of the Punjab government, who was penalised on the basis of the minority inquiry report of the Rawalpindi Commissioner into the Rawalpindi Ring Road (R3) project, has dismissed its findings describing them as unsubstantiated, biased, misleading, full of conjectures, distortions, misrepresentation, devoid of merit and mala fide.

“I was condemned unheard,” Dr Farrukh Naveed, who was removed as member/head of the Public Private Partnership (PPP) Cell of the Planning & Development (P&D) Board, said in his 19-page representation to the Punjab chief secretary. He was removed from the post on the recommendation made in the inquiry report.

At one point, he claimed that Commissioner Gulzar Shah asked him to change the minutes of the P&D Board meeting in order to cast aspersions on him and its proceedings which could then be used against him.

Dr Farrukh Naveed, who has a 22-year-long career in the civil service, wrote that although no objection was raised by the commissioner during the seventh board meeting, he preferred to write a letter to him on April 29 declaring the decision-making process leading to the advertisement of the request for proposal (RFP) on the R3 project as a violation of the PPP Act and alleging that the minutes of the 13th Project Review Committee (PRC) contained the essentials of the unlawful process which should not have been approved without a discussion/debate/full disclosure. He advised Naveed to refrain from reflecting this in the minutes of the board meeting.

He said a cursory reading of the reference reveals that the commissioner was exercising the authority of the board while giving commands/directions and asking him to change the minutes. Although the commissioner attended the meeting through video link, he said that not a single word was contributed by him on both the issues -- approval of the cancellation of the RFP and of the minutes of the 13th PRC.

Clearly as an afterthought, Dr Farrukh Naveed wrote, it was deemed necessary by the commissioner to write such a reference to cast aspersions on him and the proceedings of the board which then could be used against him while finalizing the inquiry report. It is clear from the reference that “I was being advised to refrain from recording the minutes in accordance with the proceedings of the board. If the commissioner or any other member had any doubts or concerns, those should have been presented during the meeting so that a meaningful discussion could ensue and observations addressed. Casting doubts on the decisions of the board as an afterthought can only be viewed as an attempt to substantiate his preconceived notions to write in his report.”

Dr Farrukh Naveed said that a fresh inquiry should be initiated through an impartial forum comprising senior officers and/or domain experts to review the contents of the commissioner’s findings which should submit its recommendations to the competent authority afresh, after affording an opportunity of self-defence to him in a fair/transparent manner with full access to the official record relating to the case.

The aggrieved officer gave a lengthy background of the elaborate processes relating to the approval of the R3 project by the concerned Punjab government forums. He said the commissioner’s report has serious issues of lack of understanding of the PPP regulatory mechanism, distortion of facts, conflict of interest and having been conducted without lawful authority besides having violated the principle of requiring an adequate notice, ensuring a fair and unbiased hearing.

He said that Gulzar Shah has written scathing remarks in his report about him based on his own preconceived notions and assumptions in sheer disregard to the principles of justice. The commissioner painted a scenario based upon false conjectures to malign his conduct and implicate him in the list of officers allegedly connected to the rent seeking syndicate for their “unethical silence, unethical compliance or unethical conduct”.

Dr Farrukh Naveed pointed out that the fact-finding committee constituted by the Punjab government comprised three members including the commissioner, deputy commissioner and additional commissioner, coordination, of Rawalpindi but the commissioner submitted a minority report as the two other members dissented and submitted their separate findings. This is a serious flaw which cannot be undone through any ex-post facto ratification/approval of the competent authority.

The officer said the facts stated by him show that the commissioner had already made up his mind to halt the bidding process for the R3 and had declared his views through letters which ultimately formed the basis for the notification of the fact-finding committee led by him. “How it can be presumed that an official who has framed the issues himself and had already declared his views on them can chair the committee and ensure a fair probe in the wake of his declared/preconceived notions. This is a clear case of conflict of interest which should be kept in view while ascertaining the veracity of unsubstantiated conjectures reported by him.”

Dr Farrukh Naveed said Gulzar Shah should have honourably recused himself from the committee with the request to the competent authority to assign the inquiry to any other impartial officer in the interest of transparent and legal prudence. Instead, he not only accepted the task but also went ahead and submitted a minority report without the input of the two other officers that vindicated his own stance already declared in his letters.

The sidelined official referred to a certain portion of the report where he said an assumption of a “chief minister approved alignment” had been drawn by the commissioner, which is contrary to the facts and a clear case of misrepresentation of facts with intent to mislead the competent authority.

A summary was initiated by the communications and works (C&W) department to seek the chief minister’s approval for a change of the executing agency from the C&W to the Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA) and none of the paragraphs approved by the chief minister had any proposal for the approval of the route alignment.

“The route alignment was not even described in the summary that the alignment proposed by Nespak has had the status of the ‘chief minister approved’ alignment. Facts have been distorted and misreported to challenge the alignment developed later for the R3 in the PPP mode.”

Dr Farrukh Naveed claimed that it is not only himself who has been condemned unheard but other relevant members of the PPP P&M Board, administrative departments and agencies including the Housing, Urban Development and Public Health Engineering, C&W, Punjab Ring Road Authority/executing agency, PPP cell/PPP authority and P&D Board have also not been consulted during the course of the inquiry.

He said that he or the PPP Cell had no direct role in the determination of the actual route alignment and land acquisition for the R3.