Cooperative Housing Societies registrar levels counter-allegation as political group accuses him of involvement in land grabbing

A political group and the Cooperative Housing Societies registrar have accused each other of involvement in land grabbing following a demonstration held by the former outside the Karachi Press Club on Saturday against land grabbing and street crime.

The group named Karachi Grand Alliance (KGA) demanded in the protest that administrators be immediately removed from all the cooperative housing societies in Karachi and all the Goths established after 1990 should be cancelled to promote peace and security in the city.

The protesters also alleged that government officials were in collusion with land grabbers. Speaking at the protest, KGA President Aslam Khan insinuated that Cooperative Housing Societies Registrar Zameer Abbasi was involved in illegal activities as he demanded that his assets as well as the assets of all other registrars before him during the last 15 years be checked.

Later, responding to the demand made at the protest, Abbasi claimed that the KGA was not a genuine political or civil society group but it was an organisation of land grabbers who wanted to blackmail government officials into allowing them to carry out their illegal activities.

Protest

The KGA president appealed to the judiciary during the demonstration to take notice of the plight of the allottees of plots who had been deprived of their lands for many years due to those lands being illegally occupied by land grabbers.

He called for a prompt legal action against the oppressors to ensure that all the unlawfully seized lands were reclaimed and returned to their lawful owners.

He demanded that the administrators be immediately removed from all the housing societies in Karachi, and encroachments on land under the guise of Goths be removed. He said that if necessary, administrators should be appointed for a period of 90 days under the Administrator Act, during which time elections should be conducted so that the control of the housing societies could be handed over to their elected associations.

Khan said the individuals who had participated in more than two elections should be barred from further participation. He added that the administrators should be appointed from within the cooperative societies and they should preferably be senior members who had been engaged in the affairs of their cooperative societies in the past.

He said the society members should be instructed to allocate allotments to all individuals within three months. He demanded that the assets of the current registrar of the Cooperative Housing Societies and all others who served at the post in the past 15 years be checked.

Registrar’s response

When The News contact Abbasi for his comments on the demand for checking his assets, he made counter-allegations against the KGA.

The Cooperative Housing Societies registrar stated that ever since he initiated action against land grabbers in cooperative societies, he was being continuously targeted and campaigns were being run against him in an attempt to allow land grabbers to succeed in their nefarious activities.

He said the KGA was not what it claimed to be, rather, it was an alliance of land grabbers who were conspiring to hinder government officials from performing their legal duties. He maintained that land grabbers had approached courts and filed numerous cases against government officials to dissuade them from performing their duties, but they failed to prove anything in courts.

Abbasi was of the view that after facing repeated failures in courts, such elements had resorted to protests to exert pressure. The registrar alleged that Khan was involved in land grabbing and he intended to take action against him.

He said the government had appointed administrators in housing societies where such appointments had become necessary. In cases of outright corruption, administrators were the only viable option, the registrar remarked.

He added that election officers had also been appointed in such societies and SOPs issued to prevent fraudulent elections, which tied the hands of those who would usually manipulate the elections by forming dummy committees. “If the law is being enforced, there is nothing wrong with it.”

It may be noted here that the registrar of the Cooperative Housing Societies has initiated inquiries against 35 societies where officers have been appointed to conduct inquiries based on various complaints, ranging from appointments of administrators to disputed elections, land irregularities and financial discrepancies. To halt the inquiries, more than 22 societies have obtained stay orders from the Sindh High Court.