The politics of two plots each for federal secretaries, SC judges

ISLAMABAD: It was October 2004 when at an official dinner hosted by federal secretaries in honour of the then dictator General (retd) Parvez Musharraf and his Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, the cabinet secretary demanded that two residential plots be provided to each federal secretary. Musharraf sanctioned this request.

On the same occasion, the former dictator announced that a federal secretary with two years of service in BS-22 would be offered a second residential plot in Islamabad. It took almost two years for Shaukat Aziz to implement the decision with effect from 2006.

Besides the second plot, the federal secretaries were also allowed added post-retirement privileges, including a driver and an orderly for life.

Initially, this policy was introduced only for federal secretaries but later it was extended to all grade-22 officers.

Former Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry had taken suo moto notice of the two plots policy for federal secretaries before Musharraf’s Nov 3, 2007 emergency. However, when CJ Iftikhar was suspended along with dozens of other superior court judges, the Dogar court had dismissed the CJ’s suo moto case and decided in favour of the government's two-plot policy for federal secretaries.

Later, Musharraf extended the same policy to Supreme Court judges and immediately allotted second residential plots to all the then PCO judges of the SC.

When Justice Iftikhar got reinstated, he did not touch the policy which even remained in place during the previous PPP government despite the rejection of this policy by the Public Accounts Committee of the National Assembly.

The PAC had recommended the abolition of the allocation of plots to judges, generals, bureaucrats, journalists and others on throwaway prices but neither the previous PPP or PML-N governments nor the present administration showed any interest in implementing what was recommended by the parliamentary body.

During the PMLN government, the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was initially reluctant to continue with the policy. But later, succumbing to the pressure of the civil bureaucracy, the prime minister revived the highly controversial policy of allotting two plots to all federal secretaries, grade 22 officers and judges of the Supreme Court in Islamabad.

The policy known as Prime Minister’s Special Assistance Package was suspended by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif himself soon after coming to power in 2013 for being ‘controversial and unfair’. But later, in an official summary forwarded to him by the ministry of housing and works, Sharif ordered the revival of the policy.

Some BS-22 officers, particularly those belonging to the Police Service of Pakistan, get additional plots in the name of the Police Foundation. There are a few retired BS-22 police officers who have even been allotted half a dozen plots from the Police Foundation!

Every secretary interior is also entitled to get a Police Foundation plot besides what he gets from the federal government. Those who get the chance to serve the Capital Development Authority even on deputation, acquire a residential plot for the mere reason that they had a posting in the CDA.

In a Supreme Court decision in 2020, Justice Qazi Faez Isa had talked about “the singular exception of Pakistan”, not for any good reason but for being the only country which doles out state land to a few selected classes of elite representing the “service of Pakistan”.

A cabinet member of the Imran Khan government had then told The News, on condition of anonymity that the government would look into the important points highlighted in the apex court judgment. The cabinet source had said that the points raised in the judgment were in line with Prime Minister Imran Khan’s policy of offering state resources to poor and needy people rather than to the elite. The source had hinted that the prime minister might revise the policy of doling out state land to a selected few, but it was never done.

The SC judgment had said that state land is not given (to an elite of those falling in the definition of “service of Pakistan”) in this fashion in Britain, in the United States of America nor in any Commonwealth country, with the singular exception of Pakistan.

While referring to the government policy under which civil servants, judges of the superior judiciary and members of the defence forces are given residential plots as well as commercial and agriculture land, Qazi Faez Isa in his note, which was part of the judgment, said that there is no law which allows this.

“The Constitution and the law (presidential orders) do not entitle chief justices and judges of the superior courts to plots of land. The “Supreme Court of Pakistan: Judicial Estacode (‘the Judicial Estacode’) also does not contain anything therein entitling chief justices and judges to plots of land.”

The SC judge had also noted, “The laws governing civil and armed forces personnel do not entitle them to receive residential plots, commercial plots or agricultural land.”

It was also underlined that the practice of giving away the ummah’s land in such a manner is contrary to the injunctions of Islam. “Islam jealously guards the properties and assets of the ummah (community/State). The majority of citizens are poor, they barely manage to eke out a subsistence,” the note said, adding, “The Holy Quran mandates that the destitute, the poor and the needy are entitled to charity and may be supported by the State (ummah).”

“Those in the service of Pakistan retire at the age of 60, the chief justice and judges of the High Courts at the age of 62 and the chief justice and judges of the Supreme Court at the age of 65; by which age most, if not all, already have a place to call home; if they don’t, they will receive a sizeable monthly pension which they can use to rent a place,” the note said, adding, “The amount to be spent in the current financial year 2020-2021 on pensions is 470,000,000,000 rupees (four hundred and seventy billion rupees). The annual cost of pension payments is almost equal to the cost of running the civil government, which is 476,589,000,000 rupees (four hundred and seventy-six billion, five hundred and eighty-nine million rupees). The people of Pakistan pay these pensions despite having very little themselves. To serve the nation is a singular honour. When, in addition to receiving pensions, public lands are taken it is eminently unfair.”