Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader, Senator Farhatullah Babar has said, "The continued posting of serving military officers since 1999 on the civilians cadre post of Director General Military Lands and Cantonments is an issue of violation of the Supreme Court's June 2013 order, of conflict of interest, of keeping a Prime Minister not fully informed and demoralizing civilian service cadres."
ISLAMABAD, (Pakistan Point News - 15th Jan, 2018) : Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader, Senator Farhatullah Babar has said, "The continued posting of serving military officers since 1999 on the civilians cadre post of Director General Military Lands and Cantonments is an issue of violation of the Supreme Court's June 2013 order, of conflict of interest, of keeping a Prime Minister not fully informed and demoralizing civilian service cadres." He stated this while taking part in discussion in the Senate Defence Committee to which the matter of appointment of serving major general to the post of DG MLC referred by Chairman Senate.
The meeting presided by Chairman Mushahid Hussain Sayed was attended by Senators Lt General (r) Abdul Qayum, Sehar Kamran, Col (R) Tahir Hussain Mashadi, Hidayatullah and Ilyas Bilour besides the mover Farhatullah Babar Farhatullah Babar said, the Director General Military Lands is supposed to watch the interests of the land owner namely the Federal government whereas the military is the user of the land. Placing the interests of land owner into the hands of land user is a serious conflict of interests, he said.
The PPP leader said that it can be argued that all irregularities committed in the use of land by the military in the past decades were got condoned through a waver by the then caretaker Prime Minister because the land owners’ interests were in the hands of the land users. Similarly a former army chief was given 88 acres of land as post retirement benefit, he said. Secondly, he said Supreme Court in June 2013 had said that “non-civil servants could not be appointed on deputation to any cadre of government” while declaring illegal appointments to cadre posts without the competitive process by the FPSC.
DG is a BS 21 civilian cadre post and appointments to it are made by the FPSC through CSS exams, he said. Farhatullah Babar said that in March 1995 a committee formed by Shaheed Benazir Bhutto strongly opposed any move to place the department under the charge serving officers of the land user department. He said that eight serving military officer had been appointed till date ever since General Musharraf made, for the first time such appointment.
However, in July 2013, the Prime Minister ordered that that in future the post would stand reverted to the civilian cadre he said and read out excerpts from the order. The PPP leader also read out from the verbatim of Defence Production Minister Rana Tanveer in the Senate on May 20, 2014 stating that after the last appointment the post will be reverted to the civilian officers of the cadre and asked why it had not been done. He said that that it appeared that these facts were concealed in the summary for the Prime Minister in October 2014 to change the rules arbitrarily.
The additional secretary Establishment Mr. Afzal Latif informed that the summary for amending the rules was moved by the Defence ministry directly to the PM House and Establishment had nothing to do with it. This created an interesting situation as some members wondered if a Prime Minister weakened by dharna felt obliged to approve the summary by passing the laid down procedure. After some discussion it was decided that the summary will be provided to the members within a week.
