KARACHI, May 31: The Sindh High Court on Tuesday issued notices in a petition challenging the construction of a shopping plaza on the site of Mideast Hospital in Clifton. The petitioner, a lawyer, said an amenity plot could not be put to commercial use. He made inquiries from the Clifton cantonment board and the city district government but received no satisfactory response.
He also approached non-governmental organizations active in the field of environment and building rules enforcement but failed to elicit a positive response.
He said the closure of a hospital and construction of a shopping plaza would adversely affect the availability of medical facilities and environment in the area. When the court asked petitioner-lawyer Syed Sabir Shah about his ‘locus standi’, he said he was agitating the issue in the public interest as no one else had come forward. His counsel, Khwaja Naveed Ahmed, said the alleged conversion was repugnant to the law and only a court direction could prevent it.
A bench comprising Justices Ataur Rahman and S. Ali Aslam Jafri directed that notices be issued to the respondents.
NAZIM RESTRAINED: The bench restrained the Gulshan Town administration and the town nazim from uprooting or cutting trees along Stadium Road.
Petitioner-lawyer Mukhtar Ahmed said the respondents were issued notices in his petition pending before the court after the summer vacation. However, there was an immediate threat to the trees. He alleged that the trees were being axed to facilitate a better view of certain buildings along the road.
In response to a court query, Karachi Building Control Authority counsel Shahid Jamil Khan said the entire area would be converted into ‘a concrete jungle’ if the trees were allowed to be cut.
The petitioner said trees were also being chopped in Gulistan-i-Jauhar and unless the court passed an interim restraint order, the city may suffer an irreparable loss.
OUTDOOR PUBLICITY: The city district government filed a counter-affidavit in a petition moved by Pepsi-Cola against its demand of Rs1.8 million on account of advertisement tax (fee) and land rent leviable on outdoor publicity.
Citing the law and rules, Advocate Manzoor Ahmed said the CDGK demand was fully justified. The petitioner concern advertised its product through its mobile vans and a number of boards and signs put up by it at a number of places. The CDGK counsel said the petitioner had unsuccessfully challenged the levy earlier but had concealed the dismissal of its previous petition. The petitioner’s counsel requested time to file a rejoinder to the CDGK reply. The court adjourned the matter until after the summer vacation.
MAN FINED: The Sindh High Court fined a person Rs20,000 on Tuesday for filing a writ petition on behalf of a deceased woman.
Mohammad Yaqoob Sulaiman filed the petition in 2003 on behalf of Amna Bai, who died in 1988. Alleging that Amna had executed a power of attorney to authorize Yaqoob Sulaiman to move the court, the petition challenged a notice issued by the Karachi Building Control Authority for the demolition of a violative structure constructed on Amna’s plot. The petition was dismissed in 2004 but proceedings continued in respect of certain ancillary matters.
As a miscellaneous application came up for hearing before a division bench comprising Chief Justice Sabihuddin Ahmed and Justice Maqbool Baqar, one of the respondents submitted that the main petition and the subsequent proceedings were being pursued on the basis of a bogus power of attorney.
The bench fined the attorney Rs20,000 and sentenced him till the rising of the court on Tuesday afternoon.
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