ISLAMABAD: A citizen, who earlier highlighted before the Supreme Court the miseries of slum dwellers, has regretted that the Capital Development Authority (CDA) had become restive to get the court’s Aug 26, 2015, restraining order vacated in order to demolish more katchi abadis.

In a rejoinder submitted to the apex court through his counsel Abid Hasan Minto and Bilal Hasan Minto, Aasim Sajjad Akhtar contended that the CDA through its requests was seeking, in essence, a permission from the court to violate the constitutionally protected rights of a number of citizens.

A two-judge Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Dost Mohammad Khan will resume on Wednesday the hearing of a petition earlier moved to seek a declaration that the state was duty-bound to provide shelter and other amenities to people evicted from any katchi abadi.

In the petition, Mr Akhtar had also expressed concerns over the manner employed to evict the dwellers of Sector I-11 katchi abadi by the CDA on July 30 last year.

Aasim Sajjad Akhtar informs Supreme Court that civic agency wants to get Aug 26, 2015, stay vacated

In response to the petition, the Supreme Court on Aug 26 restrained the civic agency from taking any adverse action against slums.

In its reply, the CDA pleaded before the court that since there was no provision for the regularisation of katchi abadis in the CDA Ordinance 1960, it cannot regularise them. Therefore, the federal and provincial governments should resettle the slum dwellers in their native areas, it added.

In the rejoinder, the petitioner pleaded to the court to reject the CDA request. He said the apex court had granted the stay only to protect the citizens’ fundamental right to shelter.

Since at the time of passing the restraining order the I-11 katchi abadi dwellers had been evicted, the court order could not afford protection to them. But it is, however, fully applicable to other people who were residing in katchi abadis in Islamabad on or before Aug 26, 2015.

The rejoinder regretted that the CDA in its report submitted to the court had refused to accept its constitutional and legal obligations.

“Its stance that since there is no provision for the regularisation of katchi abadis is also legally untenable since the absence of sub-constitutional legislation is not an excuse for violating the constitutionally protected rights, particularly the right to life and housing.”

It is not the case of the petitioner that the katchi abadi residents cannot be evicted at all if the regularisation of such abadis was not warranted by the law and the eviction was mandated. But before carrying out any eviction drive, the katchi abadi residents should be provided an appropriate alternative shelter, it added.

The rejoinder also regretted that despite the clear and self-explanatory orders of the court, the CDA had deliberately submitted incomplete and inaccurate information only to confuse and mislead the court.

The Supreme Court had ordered the CDA to conduct a comprehensive physical survey of katchi abadis with the assistance of other governmental agencies such as the Survey of Pakistan, Nadra and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), neatly dividing the residents and dwellings in pre-restraining order and post-restraining order categories, and then sub-dividing them into original occupants, subsequent purchaser or tenants.

“What the CDA has, however, submitted is data based on surmises, conjectures, sketches of maps of the master plan of Islamabad, unclear and blurred Google images without ever conducting any proper physical surveys of the katchi abadis of Islamabad.”

Likewise, the number of katchi abadi units, area under occupation and the number of occupants has been calculated by pure imagination without any recourse to the facts and figures.

It said the CDA had also annexed undated and undocumented photographs of random katchi abadi dwellings. These pictures again do not prove anything, the rejoinder said.

Published in Dawn, August 27th, 2016