KARACHI, June 10: The Sindh High Court rejected on Friday an urgent plea seeking stay of construction on six Bath Island plots.
The application was moved by a non-governmental organization and Bath Island residents in their pending petition against the validity of the Sindh Building Control Ordinance, 1979, and the legal status of the Karachi Building Control Authority. The SBCO had impliedly been repealed by the Sindh Local Government Ordinance, 2001, and the KBCA had been merged into the city district government, the petition said.
The application stated that the construction work was continuing day and night and the petitioners’ plea against multi-storeyed buildings in the neighbourhood would become infructuous after the completion of the violative structures. It said only double-storeyed buildings could be raised in Bath Island.
Advocate Shahid Jamil Khan submitted that the acceptance of the interlocutory application would amount to disposal of the main petition.
The impugned structures, including the French consulate building, were not violative and were being built in accordance with the approved plan and rules and regulations. There was only one deviation, which had been regularized by the authority under the law.
As for the status of the SBCO and the KBCA, the counsel argued, the 1979 ordinance and a subsequent regularization ordinance had been upheld by the superior courts.
A Sindh High Court division bench, comprising Justices Sabihuddin Ahmed and S. Ali Aslam Jafri, held in 2004 that the KBCA and the city district government were two separate entities discharging their functions under different statutes. Only the city nazim had been declared ‘authority’ under the SLGO without merging the two organizations.
The counsel said the entire construction activity would come to a standstill if the main petition or the interlocutory application were allowed. The entire building control regime would fall to the ground. The SBCO, he said, was very much an existing law and the KBCA was a body corporate with a permanent seal and perpetual succession.
Disposing of the application, a division bench comprising Justices M. Mujibullah Siddiqui and Maqbool Baqar adjourned further hearing to July 13.
Bail granted: The Sindh High Court on Friday granted bail to a man in drug case with surety of Rs100,000, adds PPI.
Mehmood Hussain was facing trial on charges with possessing 950 grams heroin powder. He was arrested by Custom on March 16, 2004 from airport while he was leaving for Khatmando.
