July 05, 2006	Wednesday	Jumadi-ul-Sani 8, 1427

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LAHORE, July 4: A full bench of the Lahore High Court on Tuesday allowed PPP leader Syed Iqbal Haider and journalists Ardshir Cowasjee and Ayaz Amir to be impleaded as party to a writ petition challenging the Punjab government’s project of building a high-rise shopping arcade and a modern cinema complex at Doongi ground on the M. M. Alam Road, Gulberg II, by a public sector undertaking, the Punjab Entertainment Company.

The Punjab government has submitted its parawise comment in the hearing of two intra-court appeals and as many writ petitions which will now be taken up on Thursday along with an objection petition which the full bench allowed to be filed on the plea of the petitioner’s counsel Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and Mohammad Azhar.

Also the secretary-general of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and a practicing lawyer, Syed Iqbal Haider, and the two senior columnists moved the LHC with the plea that they be allowed to be added to the list of the petitioners in the writ petition filed by a Karachi-based NGO,— Shehri-CBE (Citizens for Better Environment) -– and certain residents of Gulberg.

Comprising Justice Syed Sakhi Husain Bokhari, Justice Mohammad Bilal Khan and Justice Fazale Miran Chauhan, the bench is seized with two intra-court appeals, submitted by the Punjab government and the Punjab Entertainment Company, and as many writ petitions which challenged the vires of establishing a commercial venture in the public sector and the transparency in transferring land and public money to the company.

The court granted the petitioner counsel’s request of hearing his pleas that Justice Mohammad Sayeed Akhtar, who granted stay against the project, should have been included on the bench and one of its members, who vacated the stay after expressing a certain opinion in the case, should not have been part of the bench. Syed Mansoor Ali Shah submitted that the petitioners moved the pleas but were returned by the registrar office declaring them non-maintainable. He submitted that it was the court and not the registrar to decide if a petition was maintainable or not.

The LHC full bench also deferred till the next date of hearing an application of the Punjab Entertainment Company that it be allowed to complete the construction of the structure because they feared an irreparable loss in the rainy season.

The secretary of the company, who is also a deputy secretary in the information, sports and youth division, had stated earlier in the case that the cost of the cinema complex alone was around Rs230 million.

He stated that the company had, under a contract, agreed to pay about $3 million to the Canadian firm for installing its IMAX Theatre and also for transferring technology. The contract amount, according to the secretary, was to be paid in four installments of $756,260 each every three months.

On a court question, the secretary submitted that the site plan of the project was yet to be approved by the LDA. The company, he submitted, was yet to acquire the services of an architect to develop a site plan.

He also stated in reply to another court question that the company had also not invited tenders to carry out work on the project. He submitted that the construction of the shopping arcade was the responsibility of the Punjab PWD which was thinking in terms of floating bids. To another question, he submitted that the price of the ticket for the IMAX theatre was to be very high because a similar theatre in Karachi was charging about Rs500.

The petitions called into question the transfer of the land of Doongi ground from the LDA to the PHA and then to the Punjab Entertainment Company submitting that the whole process was flawed and was done in flagrant violation of the law. The transfer was ordered by the chief minister, who was not legally competent to issue such orders.

The petition also challenged the legality of the Punjab Entertainment Company, saying it was a public sector company set up for commercial purposes which the 1973 Constitution did not envisage. It submitted that the Constitution provided that the federal and provincial governments could launch public welfare projects and could not enter in the commercial or trading ventures for profit as a public sector undertaking. He submitted that billions of rupees of the public exchequer were involved in the project and the company had already spent millions only on digging the ground. The money was officially released to the company in violation of the law, the petition added.