HYDERABAD: The Supreme Court has accepted the request of retired justice Amir Hani Muslim and relieved him of his duties as the chairman of the SC-appointed judicial commission on water and sanitation.

The court order said: “Let the commission continue to perform its function assigned to it by this court by virtue of various orders”.

Retired SC Justice Muslim had asked the court to relieve him of his duties.

He had started working as the commission’s head in January this year after Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar asked him to head the commission. Earlier, the commission was headed by Justice Mohammad Iqbal Kalhoro of the Sindh High Court after it was formed in Dec 2016.

The term of the judicial commission would expire on Jan 15, 2019.

Justice Muslim was appointed as the commission’s chairman after he retired from the apex court. The judicial commission was formed as the SC passed an order on a constitutional petition filed by Karachi-based lawyer Shahab Usto in 2016.

Justice Muslim had made tremendous efforts to put things on the right track in the water, sewerage and drainage sector. During its proceedings issues like conversion of industrial and residential plots came to the fore against the backdrop of water supply, sewerage and drainage issue that was the commission’s actual mandate.

The commission wanted to hear the Sindh chief secretary on the point of conversion of industrial plots into commercial ones considering the fact that land to the Sindh Industrial Trading Estate (SITE) was granted by the Board of Revenue and SITE’s board of directors could not allow its conversion.

In case of Hyderabad, the commission had on Nov 9 formed a two-member committee jointly headed by Commissioner Abbas Baloch and local government secretary Khalid Hyder Shah to probe indiscriminate conversion of residential plots.

The committee has held three sessions and visited different areas so far. It is to submit its report within one month.

Work on commercial plazas and buildings has been stopped following the commission’s directives in SITE and across Hyderabad city.

Under the commission’s directive, two old escapes — Maado and Rawat — which were part of the Rice Canal system, were identified to provide 500 cusecs water each to the Main Nara Valley Drain (MNVD) which would take flows to Manchhar Lake.

Sindh irrigation secretary Jamal Mustafa Syed, also chairman of a task force, had worked on these escapes as they were to be used for feeding the lake during summer to overcome its contamination due to unending disposal of effluent from MNVD. The irrigation department had otherwise conceived a Rs14 billion scheme for this purpose, which later had to be shelved.

Published in Dawn, December 13th, 2018