The Chief Minister’s Secretariat has returned a Lahore Development Auth-ority’s summary seeking approval for allotment of land for buildings of nine police stations in the city, it is learnt. The secretariat returned the summary to the LDA after the chief minister wrote “no further action” on it, officials told Dawn on Wednesday.
They said the officials moved the summary to the secretariat about a year ago after the police department formally asked the LDA to identify and allot land free of cost for buildings of Township, Hanjarwal, Gulshan-i-Ravi, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Garden Town, Johar Town, Faisal Town and Liaquatabad police stations.
“The chief minister neither approved nor rejected the summary. ‘No further action’ means he didn’t give LDA go ahead to allot land to the police department,” says an LDA official. The official said the process of land allotment to the police department was initiated by the LDA when Umar Rasool was the director general.
“After receiving summary with such comments, the LDA can neither allot land to the police department nor cancel this proposal on its own. So we can now consider this matter as pending,” he added. LDA Director General Abdul Jabbar Shaheen said he was unaware of any such a summary. “This summary was perhaps moved to the CM Secretariat before my posting here,” he said.
CM Secretariat’s Secretary Dr Tauqeer Shah said the government had not allocated funds for the construction of new government buildings and offices in its annual budget for the year 2011-12. “The decision was meant to increase spending on health, education, water and sanitation projects. I think that’s why the chief minister did not allow allotment of land to the police department for construction of new police station buildings,” said Shah.
