Lahoris have despairingly seen the steady deterioration of the air quality in their beloved city, once known for its shade covered roads and parks galore. Over the years, many trees have been cut down to make way for roads and further development, including the Mall Road, once famed as the “Thandee Sarak”.

As a result, Lahore is today one of the most polluted cities in the world due to its deteriorating air quality, but the PML-N government is clearly not bothered. The Gullu Butts of the PML-N are so impressed by the Dubai/Saudi model of ‘development’ that they would like to make a flyover, underpass and expressway on every major road in the city.

‘Urban planners’ in the provincial government have long had their eye on Lahore’s tree-lined Canal Road, which runs through the centre of the city — every time they make a new underpass or U-turn on it, they cut down dozens of mature trees and pave the green belts with concrete. They have already damaged large portions of the canal under the guise of “development”. Instead of protecting the remaining green belts in the city, which really give Lahore its character, they are bent on degrading its environment.

They seem to think that by widening the Canal Road, they can solve the traffic congestion that is currently being caused by all the extra cars on the roads. The provincial government, in fact, came very close to cutting down around 1,850 mature trees lining the canal in an attempt to widen the road and turn it into an expressway. It was only thanks to the efforts of a group of concerned citizens, comprising architects, lawyers and environmentalists that the project was stopped some years ago.

If the PML-N govt’s ‘flyover fascination’ wins out, Lahore will be the loser

They started a movement called the Lahore Bachao Tehreek, which not only came out on the streets to protest against the project, but also went to court. During their campaign they pointed out that cutting down the trees would result in increased noise and air pollution. There would be no trees left to absorb the toxic emissions from the thousands of cars that travel along the canal each day.

The Lahore Bachao Tehreek also predicted that the cutting of so many trees would result in the “heat island affect”, leading to a temperature increase of two to three degrees in the immediate vicinity. Perhaps their main point was that widening the road was not the answer to controlling traffic. In most civilised cities of the world, the answer lies in the development of an efficient public transportation system and improving traffic conditions throughout the city.

After seven years of sustained struggle, the Lahore Bachao Tehreek finally won a huge legal victory in 2011. The Supreme Court of Pakistan in its judgment dated Sept 15, 2011, declared the Lahore Canal area a ‘Public Trust’ and ‘Heritage Urban Park’ from Thokar Niaz Baig to Jallo Park.

The Supreme Court (SC) placed strict restrictions and guidelines for safeguarding the area, which consists of over 1,500 acres of ‘Public Parkland’ in the form of ‘Green belts’. The Supreme Court recognised that the area has special historical, cultural and environmental significance as the lungs of the city and should be people-centric, thereby ‘Restoring Communal Life’ to the area with ‘Public participation in Lahore Canal Governance.’ The exemplary citizen initiative that led to the judgment is now being used as a case study in leading universities like MIT.

However, their victory was short-lived because as Imrana, one of the founders of the Lahore Bachao Tehreek, points out, the government has been “constantly violating” the Supreme Court’s judgment. In the last couple of years, not only has there been non-compliance of the court order, but the illegal widening of the Canal Road has taken place at three points beyond the Dharampura underpass. Despite the protests of the residents of Lal Pul area, who even hired a lawyer and took the case to the High Court, the road widening still took place. There are also plans to commercialise a section of the canal known as Maratib Ali Road with high-rise buildings.

Then in 2013, the Punjab Assembly passed the “Lahore Canal Heritage Act” and an Advisory Committee was formed with both government and civil society members. The Lahore Bachao Tehreek were delighted that the matter was finally decided with this act that declared the canal to be a protected area. But the government had not given up either and they moved the SC to widen the entire Canal Road, thereby lifting all constraints on the protection of the canal area and removal of all restrictions on road widening. This case is currently pending with a stay order.

At present, the government wants to build 12 U-turns on the Canal Road, which would again require the widening of the road. This was brought up at a meeting held by the Parks and Horticultural Authority a month ago. “This matter just won’t be laid to rest; every time we think it’s over, they come back with another attempt to widen the canal road,” says a frustrated Imrana. The Lahore Bachao Tehreek has lodged a protest with the Advisory Committee whose civil society members have promised to support them.

A ‘Public Hearing’ was recently held to discuss the issue of the road widening. According to Imrana, who attended the meeting with other members of the Lahore Bachao Tehreek, “The entire hall was full of a busload of goondas and badmaash from the inner city, rude and obnoxious. The local MPA for the canal constituency was there on stage, he held a full jalsa with ‘naaras’ and shouting, and at the end ‘threatened’ us with dire consequences, saying he would finish us, and that we did not know his ways.”

The ‘Public Hearing’ was itself quite illegal. “It was in contempt of court and invalid, which we stated at the outset. It was in violation of the SC’s judgment and the Lahore Canal Heritage Act,” explains Imrana.

She says they complained to the Environment Protection Agency officials who were present at the hearing, about the outrageous behaviour of the “obnoxious MPA who had a hall full of Gullu Butts who said they knew no law.” The Gullu Butt crowd claimed that 90pc of them (the “ordinary citizens of Lahore”) wanted the road widened and they would file an application stating this in the ongoing case in the SC filed by the government in 2012 (asking for permission to widen the whole Canal Road).

According to Imrana, “It is astounding that the writ for this was accepted a year after the protective judgment declaring it a ‘Public Trust’ and ‘Urban Heritage Park’ had been passed!”

The Lahore Bachao Tehreek will not be deterred, however, and they plan to meet soon to strategise and give out a call for action “to combat this most undesirable face of what they call ‘good governance’”. The PML-N had better watch out!

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, July 27th, 2014