The New Nation - Internet Edition

Former adviser to the caretaker government Barrister Mainul Hosein yesterday said that the sub-committee of the parliamentary standing committee on housing and public works yesterday made the same old allegations in a new language

In a statement he said he had earlier termed all the allegations brought against him by the parliamentary standing committee as baseless.

Barrister Hosein said it has to be seen whose allegations are levelled against whom.

He made it categorically clear that during his one year tenure he did not allot any plot of land to anybody. He also dismissed the allegations of allotting hundreds of plots at Khulna and Kushtia as totally baseless. This can only be called an extra allegation. I rather tried to allot land to slum-dwellers of Dhaka city but could not do so, he said.

He asked the honourable members of the parliamentary sub-committee to ponder how they have tainted their own image and importance by trying to belittle his (Mainul) position through allegations not supported by facts.

There are some people in society who judge others by what they themselves are. The investigation was to be completed within one month. But it is yet to be completed. When investigation is completed, it would be seen how some mean-minded people have tried to mislead the sub-committee by providing fictitious information out of personal grudge, he added.

Earlier, a parliamentary probe body headed by Nasrul Hamid Bipu MP complained of "corruption" in the Works Ministry during the past alliance and caretaker regimes and accused Adviser Barrister Mainul Hosein of allotting plots through misuse of power.

Briefing journalists at the Jatiya Sangsad Media Centre, the sub-committee convener said they received allegations of "corruption, misuse of power" by the former adviser and his family members.

The former Adviser of the caretaker government had interfered in allotment of 158 plots under the Khulna Development Authority (KDA) to different parties "in violation of the existing rules", he alleged.

Nasrul Hamid said the subcommittee was still examining all these allegations.

Nasrul said the alliance government had illegally allotted 25 bighas of land in Tejgaon Industrial Area for a "media village" where a hospital was set to be built.

In 1996, the then Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, had laid the foundation stone of the hospital named after Sheikh Fazlul Huq Moni, he informed.

He said the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Housing Ministry has recommended cancellation of allotment of the plots

Subcommittee members Asaduzzaman Khan MP and Enamul Haque MP were present.

What the sub-committee convener said was a repetition of the allegations made in the standing committee on the Ministry of Housing and Public Works before. He has not succeeded to refute what the adviser had said in reply throwing a challenge to prove the allegations.