The government has no scope to be compassionate regarding BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia's cantonment house, Law Minister Shafique Ahmed said yesterday.
His comments come as the opposition leader's lawyers seek to have the government reconsider its decision cancelling allotment of the house on “humanitarian grounds”.
"Only those who do not have a shelter deserve such consideration on humanitarian grounds. In Khaleda Zia's case, this will be an unjust enrichment in legal terms," Shafique told BSS.
Earlier, the former premier's lawyer and Supreme Court Bar Association President Khandaker Mahbub Hossain said he expects the government to reconsider its earlier decision on “humanitarian grounds”.
"I urge Bangabandhu's daughter and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to consider the case on humanitarian grounds, showing her broadness," he told BSS.
The SCBA chief argued that the High Court might have delivered the judgment on technical or legal points, while the government had scopes to revise its decision to evade an “unnecessary political issue” which could drag the higher judiciary into controversy.
But the law minister said Khaleda was given the property worth Tk 400 crore in current market price, defying the law by the then government of president Justice Abdus Sattar, while she was already allotted another posh house at Gulshan worth Tk 9 crore.
He also questioned why Khaleda was unwilling to accept the court verdict when she herself preferred a legal battle on the issue.
State lawyers earlier argued at the court that the leasing out of the cantonment residence, earmarked for the deputy army chief, was contrary to the Rule 5 of the Cantonment Land Administration Rule of 1937.
"The land falls under A 1 category, while the rules allowed leasing out of lands of C categories alone," the attorney general argued at the court, which eventually pronounced the verdict validating the government notice served on Khaleda.
The HC bench comprising Justice Nazmun Ara Sultana and Justice Sheikh Hassan Arif pronounced the judgment on a writ by Khaleda Zia, and also asked the government to give her one-month time to vacate the house.
Khaleda's lawyers, however, earlier said they were expecting to file an appeal with the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court against the verdict after obtaining consent of their client.
The government last year asked her to vacate the residence on an area of 2.72 acres of land at the Dhaka cantonment, which she was allotted 29 years ago under a controversial lease agreement.
The cabinet on April 8 last year cancelled the lease on grounds that the leasing process had been faulty and she violated lease terms. Subsequent notices furthermore said she was carrying out political activities from the house located in a “protected area”.
Khaleda Zia filed the writ petition on May 3, 2009, challenging the notice.
The then government had allocated Khaleda another house in uptown Gulshan area in 1981 while she was again offered the bigger house at the cantonment in 1982 after the assassination of her husband president Ziaur Rahman in an abortive coup in 1981.
The Rajuk rules suggested that nobody would be entitled to a government plot if he or she obtained one earlier.
Meanwhile, Awami League Joint General Secretary Mahbubul Alam Hanif yesterday termed SCBA President Khandaker Mahbub's remark about the HC verdict as “extremely audacious” and amounting to contempt of court.
As a lawyer he cannot make such comments, Hanif told TV journalists.