On February 10, the Federal Cabinet approved the summary submitted by the Ministry of Defence to accord the status of a Defence Housing Authority (DHA) to a sprawling Army housing scheme of over 4,000 acres on the outskirts of Islamabad.

Within hours of the cabinet decision, all the opposition parties in the Senate filed an adjournment motion seeking a debate on this. The adjournment motion was signed jointly by senators from the PPP, the PML (N), the MMA and the PONM, and even by a Senator from the Tribal areas. Simultaneously, opposition members of the Senate Standing Committee on Defence and Defence Production requisitioned a special meeting to discuss "issues arising out of the decision of the cabinet."

Ordinarily, the Senate must take up an adjournment motion backed by all opposition parties. Similarly, under the rules, the Standing Committee meeting requisitioned must also be convened within two weeks. But going by past experience of how of parliamentary instruments in which the word "defence" merely figures are killed in the chamber, one is not sure about the fate of these parliamentary instruments.

Why this fuss about the naming of a particular housing scheme Defence Housing Authority? Some may argue that the proposed DHA in Islamabad, supposedly a private enterprise, will not be a burden on the national exchequer. It will be claimed that the DHA is being built on private lands and will not expropriate state land for the benefit of some individuals. Some may claim, as was done by the administrator of Islamabad's DHA, that the new autonomous body would adopt the rules and regulations of the CDA. So why the objections against it?

It will also be claimed that Defence Housing authorities are efficient and are manned by honest people, and that is why they are so profitable. In September, speaking at the groundbreaking ceremony of a power and sea-water desalination plant for the Defence Housing Authority in Karachi, General Musharraf took to task the critics of the defence societies. Why should anyone be "jealous" if someone else initially obtains a cheap piece of land, the price of which rises by a hundred times because of the good work done by the housing society, enabling the land-holders to earn money, he asked, dismissing the critics as "pseudo-intellectuals."

It will therefore not be surprising if the realtors behind the DHA of Islamabad, acting on command, dismiss the Senators' plea to discuss "issues arising out of the decision" as rantings of the "jealous" or outbursts of "pseudo-intellectuals."

If the claim that the DHA in Islamabad would follow the rules and regulations of the CDA is correct, then one might ask a counter-question: why change the status of the existing housing society and why does the Defence Ministry have to move the Cabinet to set up a separate body parallel to the CDA?

There indeed are far deeper issues to be addressed. One critical issue is that of the military first capturing state power and then employing this power to advance its corporate interests in the same way as a political party after acquiring power uses it to advance the party interests by making laws to legalize such an activity? It becomes even more serious, in that while political leaders are accountable for it, the military is not.

Some examples will illustrate this.

A private housing society called the Lahore Cantonment CooperativeHousing Society Limited was set up in Lahore under the Punjab Cooperative Societies Act of 1925, which carried its operations on private lands. As soon as the society began flourishing, the army authorities took forcible possession of the society. On a complaint, the Registrar of the Cooperative Societies ordered that elections be held, but the occupiers refused.

Come the military takeover in October 1999 and there was no way stopping the army authorities from continuing the illegal occupation of the housing society, refusing to let its members perform their statutory functions and continuing to allot plots to military officers.

On September 19, 2002, three weeks before the general elections, Presidential Order No 26 was issued, setting up the Defence Housing Authority in Lahore, in place of the civilian cooperative housing society.

The Order was subsequently indemnified through the 17th amendment to the Constitution, thus giving a pseudo-legal basis to the takeover of the Lahore Cantonment Housing Society. State power was dubiously used to advance the corporate interests of the occupiers.

In Karachi also, a private Cooperative Housing Society formed in 1953 was abolished and replaced with the Pakistan Defence Officers Housing Authority under presidential order No 7 of 1980. This order was indemnified at the time of the lifting of martial law to give a pseudo-legal cover to a forcible takeover.

It is said that the DHA Islamabad will function as efficiently as their counterpartsin Karachi and Lahore. The Karachi DHA is a unique set-up as it is not subordinate to any ministry nor under a statutory administrative control. It refuses to pay government dues. During replies to parliamentary questions, it transpired that the DHA has been refusing to pay for the past two decades over Rs280 million in state dues owed to the Cantonment Board of Clifton.

How have the DHAs become an investor's paradise? Apart from refusing to pay state dues, Karachi's DHA adopted a unique modus operandi to grab hundreds of acres of prime state lands.

The DHA forcibly occupied 240 acres of provincial government land which the government had been refusing to give it because of an ordinance which forbade the sale of government lands to other entities, and also because the housing authority was not prepared to buy it at market rates. The Sindh government appealed to the Sindh High Court, claiming that the market price of the land was Rs15,000 per square yard for residential and Rs25,000 rupees per square yard for commercial plots and urging it to restraint the DHA from taking over its land.

What happened in this case makes a sorry tale of how state and political power was employed to advance corporate interests. After the military takeover of October 1999, the provincial government was forced to withdraw its ordinance banning the sale of land, withdraw its petition from the High Court and agree to the sale of 240 acres of land to the DHA at the ridiculously low rate of Rs20 a square yard.

Take the case of military farmlands in Okara and other towns of Punjab. The farmlands belong to the government of Punjab and were leased to the military for a specific purpose. The military has neither paid the lease rent to the provincial government nor vacated the land and return it to the provincial government.

Instead, the military is forcing the tenants of farmlands to renounce their rights of sharecropping and accept the contract system. Almost routinely, the tenants are subjected to state repression after dubbing their leaders as working for some undisclosed foreign agents.

Take the case of acquisition in October of an additional 870 acres of prime land in Sector E-10 in the capital for the GHQ at Rs200 per square yard, against the market value of Rs120,000 per square yard, causing a loss of over Rs500 billion to the CDA. This land is in addition to the 1,400 acres already allocated for the GHQ. An adjournment motion seeking to debate this extravaganza however did not come up on the floor of the Senate.

Or, take the case of the misuse of government lands given to the military for specific defence purposes. It transpired recently, again in replies to parliamentary questions, that the military had transformed six agricultural and dairy farms spread over several hundred acres of land into golf courses and army housing schemes. If an enterprise gets prime land free and develops housing societies on it, it is bound to be an investor's bonanza and a realtor's paradise.

It is not that the "pseudo-intellectuals" are crying hoarse because they are "jealous." Tongues are wagging because state lands continue to be captured under pseudo-legal cover. Concerned citizens and parliamentarians must raise their voice against this.

 The writer is a Senator of the Pakistan Peoples' Party. Email: drkhshan@isb.comsats.net.pk