June 06, 2007	Wednesday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 20, 1428

ISLAMABAD, June 5: The Rawalpindi bench of the Lahore High Court (LHC) on Tuesday dismissed a writ petition filed by a construction company seeking halt to work on a road project launched by the Capital Development Authority.

Justice Naseem Sikandar refused to stop the ongoing reconstruction work on the western carriageway of the Islamabad Highway as part of the CDA’s road expansion programme.

The A1 Construction Company, owned by a brother of federal minister for health Nasir Khan, through its counsel Barrister Ahmad Qayyum had requested the court to halt the work on the road.

The applicant said he had been awarded the contract of the western highway by the CDA but later it was cancelled and given to some favourites of the authority. It requested the court to cancel the contract and award it to the company again on the terms and conditions which had been set previously.

Barrister Masroor Shah, counsel for the CDA, challenged the maintainability of the writ and contended that CDA cannot be sued for commercial contractual disputes by contractors in constitutional petitions.

He argued that the petitioner had been executing the project at a very slow pace which caused nuisance to the public and so the CDA was well within its rights to terminate the contract and award it to someone else who could do the work to the satisfaction of the authority.