KARACHI, Oct 4: The city district government strongly opposed the conversion of the Webb Ground in the Sindh High Court on Thursday.
CDG counsel Manzoor Ahmed submitted before a division bench comprising Justices Sarmad Jalal Osmany and Ali Sain Dino Metlo that the ground has long been used as a playing field by the residents of the Lines Area. It was the only open space in a highly congested lower middle class neighbourhood. He referred to successive superior court judgments declaring that an amenity plot could in no case be put to commercial use.
The counsel said the land comprising the ground was not owned by the ministry of defence or the military estate office and the Army Welfare Trust had no right to lease it out to a commercial concern (Makro-Habib) for the construction of a cash-and-carry departmental store, which would intensify traffic and environmental problems in the area. The land was transferred to the Karachi Municipal Corporation and subsequently to the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, the CDG predecessors, in the 1970s. The city government has documentary evidence of the payment of price and the transfer of the land but the respondent concern was raising construction post-haste to create an irreversible position.
The city government stance endorses the position taken by the petitioners, non-governmental organisation Shehri and former councilor Mehfoozun Nabi Khan. The petitioners have also moved a contempt application for proceeding apace with construction in violation of the court’s restraint order.
The bench asked the respondents to strictly observe its interim order against raising further construction and creating any third party interest whatsoever. It wondered why the respondent concern was in a hurry to raise a structure in the absence of public utilities like electricity, sewerage and gas. The bench asked the ministry of defence to submit its comments through the deputy attorney-general. The ministry was joined as a respondent subsequently when the respondent concern claimed that the land originally belonged to the military estate office.
Adjourning the hearing to October 9, the bench again asked the respondents to maintain the status quo.
Faryal’s plea
PPP covering candidate Faryal Talpur’s petition against the acceptance of President Pervez Musharraf’s nomination papers was again adjourned to Friday at the request of her counsel.
Advocate Farooq H. Naek submitted on behalf of the petitioner, who is district nazim of Nawabshah and the sister of PPP leader Asif Ali Zardari, that the Supreme Court was seized of identical matters. The 10-member SC bench may dismiss the petitions under Article 184 (3) and may ask the petitioners to invoke the writ jurisdiction of the high court against the chief election commissioner’s order. The request was granted by a division bench consisting of Justices Sarmad Jalal Osmany and Ali Sain Dino Metlo and the petition was re-fixed for hearing on Friday.
Benazir’s security
A non-governmental organisation named ‘Human Safety Foundation’ has, meanwhile, moved a petition to seek a direction to the administration to provide ‘fool proof’ security to PPP Chairperson Benazir Bhutto on her arrival on Oct 18. Advocate Shafqat Shah Masoomi , who had sought and got an identical direction on the eve of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry’s arrival on behalf of ‘Pakistan International Human Rights Organisation’, requested the court in the new petition to order full protection for Ms Bhutto and her procession from the airport to Bilawal House via Quaid’s mazar.
Meanwhile, Ms Bhutto’s petition seeking protective bail on her arrival is fixed for hearing before a division bench comprising Chief Justice Sabihuddin Ahmed and Justice Faisal Arab on Friday. The petitioner apprehends that she may be arrested in accountability cases pending against her.
