ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court`s (IHC) Justice Aamer Farooq on Wednesday reserved judgment on the auction of sites for proposed fivestar hotels in the federal capital.

The sites are located in Blue Area between F-9 and G-9, Murree Road and the northern strip of E-11 and are likely to fetch Rs40 billion for the civic agency. The auction was scheduled to be held on November 16 and 17.

A petition was filed by a local lawyer, Arafat Ahmed in which he alleged that the sites were being auctioned to `some blue-eyed party/group` The petitioner claimed that CDA had also offered the noor area ratio very generously which would allow the construction of buildings that are 100-storey tall.

The counsel argued before the court that the CDA advertisement for the auction of the sites explicitly stated that the three plots were being presented for luxury hotels, which conveys a clear impression that the proposed sites are being auctioned off only for the construction of hotels.

The brochure mentions that 20pc of the covered area can be used for commercial purposes, he added.

Responding to the petition, CDA`s counsel Kashif Ali Malik Advocate argued that the process for the said auction was initiated in a transparent manner and in accordance with the applicable law and regulations. Hesaid that CDA is the custodian of state land and that therefore, it must account for all its transactions.

Challenging the locus standi or the right to speak of the petitioner, the counsel said that because he was a lawyer, the petitioner was not an aggrieved party and also did not in any way had a locus standi to file the petition. The petitioner was also not otherwise a participant of the proposed action, he said.

The CDA`s counsel claimed that the petition was not serving public interest as the aggrieved parties were builders and developers and added that the Developers Association of Islamabad had spent millions of rupees tostopthe said auction byplacing advertisements in newspapers.

The said advertisement was published the same day on which the petition was filed in IHC, on November 13, 2015. Instead of representatives from the Developers Association, the lawyer had filed the petition on his own and insisted that it was public interest litigation.

According to the CDA counsel, the civic authority has spent a large sum of money on advertisements in national and international newspapers for the auction.

He said that the petition had caused huge losses to the CDA and had also led to precious plots being tagged as `under litigation` which may mean that they might not fetch the revenue that the CDA was expecting before setting them aside for auction.