ISLAMABAD: A legal tangle over the commercial use of residential houses in the city ballooned on Friday when the Supreme Court ordered the Capital Development Authority (CDA) to furnish within 15 days a detailed report on such use and also on the security barriers raised by the foreign missions operating in the residential sectors.

“Nowhere in the world such exemptions are permissible. Such things happen only in Pakistan,” observed Justice Sarmad Jalal Osmany of a two-member bench while hearing a challenge by a private firm to the order passed against it by the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on the charge of non-conforming use of a house in Sector F-7/1.

His brother judge on the bench, Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja, asked, referring to the privately erected security barricades: “Who gave them the right to block roads in the name of security?”

Calls for details of non-conforming use of houses and roads that it permitted in the city since 2005

“Is the CDA our masters to grant such exemptions? They should tell us,” he said.

While rejecting an appeal by the Bridge Factor (Pvt) Ltd on June 6 against a CDA notice for running its office in a residential building, the IHC had simultaneously asked CDA to probe how many more enterprises were guilty of non-conforming use of buildings. That CDA is said to have not done. The firm petitioned the Supreme Court after its intra-court appeal was also dismissed on June 30.

In the court proceedings on Friday, the CDA drew the ire of the judges when its lawyer, Hafiz Hifzur Rehman, submitted that CDA’s bylaws of 2005 grant it exclusive jurisdiction to exempt any non-conforming use and that it had permitted some foreign missions to make their own arrangements for security and protection.

But the CDA also served almost 2,000 notices of non-conforming use of residential facilities by commercial enterprises, the counsel said.

On the other hand, advocate Ali Raza, representing the firm, argued that the CDA issued notices at its sweet will and likes and dislikes.

“We knew that CDA was like a mighty lord, but not that they had laws too to protect their might,” said Justice Khawaja.

Should the court issue notices to these embassies, he asked the CDA, pointedly recalling that in one of the missing persons cases the Supreme Court had summoned a representative of the United Nations who eventually had to tender an apology.

Finally, the bench ordered CDA to submit it a detailed report as to how many requests for the non-conforming use of buildings and facilities it has received since 2005, and give reasons for both granting and declining them.

Similarly, the CDA has to inform the court how many foreign missions have raised barricades around their offices when it takes up the case again after two weeks.

Published in Dawn, November 29th, 2014