Gail Alexan­der

A mat­ter of "self sac­ri­fice" for the good of T&T. This was how at­tor­ney Is­rael Khan yes­ter­day de­scribed his res­ig­na­tion from the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) and the con­struc­tion sec­tor.

Khan, who in­sist­ed he was not forced to ten­der his res­ig­na­tion, said he felt com­pelled to quit from his post as com­mis­sion­er. "Those who know me and who are ac­quaint­ed with me would im­me­di­ate­ly re­alise that I was com­pelled to cas­ti­gate (Ude­cott's ex­ec­u­tive chair­man) Mr Calder Hart be­cause he made un­found­ed al­le­ga­tions against me," he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Khan, Hart re­port­ed­ly threat­ened to bring an ac­tion of ju­di­cial re­view against all the com­mis­sion­ers pre­sid­ing in the in­quiry. "Now that I am no longer a com­mis­sion­er, there should be no threats against the com­mis­sion­ers and this com­mis­sion will now pro­ceed with dis­patch to com­plete this mat­ter," he said.

Say­ing he had no "doubt that his­to­ry would ab­solve him," Khan said Hart was "para­noid." "He is act­ing like some­thing on a hill and he per­ceives that the slight­est breeze that comes along will blow him down and he was al­so be­hav­ing as if he has co­coa in the sun," he said. "The pos­si­bil­i­ty ex­ists that sub­con­scious­ly, I may hold a bias against Hart and I may have not giv­en him a fair hear­ing...So the best thing for me to do was to step down."