MULTAN: An accountability court granted on Monday 11-day physical remand of former chief engineer Sabir Khan Sadozai and five other officials to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB)in the Multan metro bus case.

Besides Mr Sadozai, executive engineers Amanat Ali and Riaz Hussain, sub-divisional officers Manzoor Ahmed, Rana Wasim and Munim Saeed were produced in the court where investigation officer Muhammad Shahid requested for further remand which was granted. The court directed NAB to present the accused in court on Oct 18.

The investigation of ficer said the accused misused their authority by ignoring the directions of the Planning and Development Board of Punjab and got approved the bill of quantities items at higher rates causing loss of millions of rupees. They split the PC-I of the project into eight packages instead of a single PC-I, conducted nontransparent pre-qualification of contractors and consultants in violation of the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority rules and instructions of the Planning and Development Division.

He stated that the accused approved technical sanction detail esti-mates on the basis of the National Highway Authority templates instead of market rate schedule (MRS) of the Punjab government contrary to the instructions of the P&D Board Punjab on March 9, 2015 which resultedintoalossof Rs721 million to the national exchequer. Also, they processed the approval of grant of extension of time after lapse of 18 months and allowed payment of speedy execution at 5pc of contract price instead of imposing penalty required under clause 39 of the contract agreement resulting into loss of Rs1.04 billion and processed the approval of illegal payment to the tune of Rs80 million on account of wooden planks/ precast planks used for shuttering purpose.

The accused were arrested on Sept 13 and produced before the court on Sept 14.

BY-POLLS: By-poll for PP-217 will be held on Nov 28, as per the schedule announced by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Monday.

On Oct 1, the ECP disqualified Salman Naeem, an independent-turnedPakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf MPA who defeated Shah Mehmood Qureshi in general elections.

He was disqualified by the ECP for being underage.

In the elections, Naeem secured 35,300 votes while his opponent PTI candidate Mr Qureshi bagged 31,716 votes.