PESHAWAR: A Peshawar High Court bench on Tuesday suspended operation over certain findings made by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial ombudsman against official of Peshawar Development Authority (PDA) including its director general on account of awarding a contract of renovation of the authority`s of fice at Hayatabad Peshawar.

The bench comprising Justice Syed Afsar Shah and Justice Mohammad Ghazanfar Khan also restrain different authorities including provincial local government department, federal ministryof defence and the managing director of KP Public Procurement and Regulatory authority (PPR A) from taking any adverse action against the director general of PDA.

Thebenchdirectedtherespondents including the provincial ombudsman to file comments in reply to a writ petition filed by Mohammad Saleem Wattoo, the director general of PDA, challenging the findings of the provincial ombudsman of August 9, 2017.

In its findings, the ombudsman declared maladministration and mis-procurement in the award of contract and directed local government department to take action against the employees of PDA. The ombudsman secretariat had also sent copies of the findings to the director general military land and cantonments department (the parent department of PDA`s DG), secretary local government and PPRA for taking departmental actions against the concernedofficials.

Earlier, the high court on July 25 had stopped provincial government from implementing certain other recommendations of the provincial ombudsman of July 14 through which he had declared PDA an illegal entity and asked the government to stop its officers from exercising their functions.

The court had also stopped the ministry of defence from taking any disciplinary action against Mr Wattoo on the recommendation of the provincial ombudsman, who had claimed that the DG, an employee of the ministry of defence and on deputation with the provincial government, was guilty of maladministration and misconduct.

Advocate Tariq Khan Afridi appeared for the petitioner and contended that ombudsman had been settling personal scores with the petitioner and due to same reason he had been issuing different orders from time-to-time to pres-surise the DG. He claimed that the petitioner had declined to shift accounts of PDA to a bank where his (ombudsman) son was employed. He stated that earlier a contempt of court notice was issued to the petitioner, which was challenged before the high court and was still pending.

He said that the contract of the renovation of the office of PDA was awarded to Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) by the competent body in a meeting after fulfilling legal formalities.

Meanwhile, another bench comprising Justice Mohammad Ibrahim Khan and Justice Ijaz Anwer Khan extended a stay order earlier issued by the court restraining National Accountability Bureau (NAB) from starting of fresh inquiries against the director general of PDA, who claimed that the bureau had earlier closed all the inquiries against him after proper verification.