ISLAMABAD: Originally a Capital Development Authority (CDA) idea that the Supreme Court overruled in 2013, plans to tunnel the Margallas to link Islamabad with Haripur by a highway have again landed in the apex court.

This time the National Highway Authority (NHA) has sought a review of the judgment that the ex-Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry had passed because the new highway plan forms part of the Pakistan-China Economic Corridor (PCEC) network.

NHA counsel Shakeel Awan requested the Supreme Court to keep the option of tunneling the Margalla open, which its October 25, 2013 judgment had closed citing environmental laws and threats the activity would pose to the ecology of the protected Margalla National Park area.

But the design of the planned highway that NHA’s General Manager Designing Asim Ameen provided on demand of the three-judge bench of the Supreme Court that took up the request on Wednesday, amused Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja who heads the bench.

“It is as straight as a ‘jalebi’. It seems as if the authorities wanted to oblige the already privileged,” remarked the judge, looking at the design.

Apparently puzzled at the sight of the highway entering Islamabad through the tunnel, cut through its urban areas and then head for Gujranwala via Taxila, the bench asked the NHA to submit it a comprehensive report on April 16 explaining why the Margallas had to be tunneled for the project and designed in a way that flouted the court’s 2013 judgment.

Interestingly, the NHA request for the review of that judgment has come in the midst of allegations by the opposition political parties and others that the PML-N government has changed the original route of the multi-billion economic corridor project to benefit the province of Punjab.

In February, the Pakistan Environment Protection Agency had denied clearing the construction of a Raikot-Islamabad highway, part of the PCEC network, saying it had rejected the mandatory Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) report submitted for the project as “unprofessional” and “confusing”.

It said the NHA and the China Road and Bridge Corporation needed to explain their joint project.

Earlier, the government had informed the Supreme Court on March 29, 2012 that it had shelved ‘for the time being’ the tunnel project designed to provide a shorter route to commuters of Gilgit-Baltistan, Mansehra and Abbottabad.

Later, on a petition of citizens Israr Ahmed, Muhammad Ibrar Abbasi and Gul Zaman that the CDA chairman and chief commissioner of Islamabad were not implementing the 2013 judgment, the Supreme Court ordered Interior Secretary Shahid Khan to submit a report whether or not quarrying and other activities harmful to the environment going on in Sangjani-Tarnol suburbs of Islamabad fall in the protected Margalla National Park area and in the jurisdiction of CDA or the Islamabad administration.

On Wednesday, Advocate Syed Nayyab Hassan Gardezi, representing the petitioners, alleged that illegal quarrying activities were continuing “not in the daylight but in the darkness of night”.

Meanwhile, a separate bench of the Supreme Court headed by Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali also sought complete information relating to government funds allocated to the environment departments and their workforce throughout the country.

The directive related to a case initiated in 2003 regarding pollution and environmental degradation in the country.

The court also asked the federal and provincial environment protection departments to submit it their plans to arrest environmental degradation within a month.

Published in Dawn, April 9th, 2015

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