ISLAMABAD: The Sup­reme Court on Monday stayed the Peshawar High Court’s (PHC) directive for the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to thoroughly investigate the controversial Peshawar Rapid Bus Transport (BRT) project.

A three-judge SC bench, headed by Justice Umar Ata Bandial, issued notices to the respondents but asked the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to furnish complete details of the project’s initial estimated cost and its increase that happened due to delay.

The apex court had taken up a set of appeals filed by the KP government through the provincial chief secretary, Peshawar Develop­ment Authority and secretaries of the local government and rural and transport departments seeking to overturn the Nov 14, 2019 judgement in which the PHC had formulated 35 questions and referred the matter to the FIA for a thorough inquiry.

Makhdoom Ali Khan, counsel for the PDA, argued that the high court’s verdict could not sustain for three reasons. First, he said, the reasoning of the judgement spread over 11 pages did not come from documents or reports which were on record before the court. Moreover, the high court order did not mention any of the pleadings of the petitioner; rather it was a ‘cut and paste’ from a document extraneous to the record, which was also evident from the facts that it referred to annexes which were not attached to the judgement. It also referred to the phone number and name of a consultant.

Secondly, the counsel argued, the PHC had without any reasons accepted the petition and referred the matter to the FIA; besides, the high court order did not add a word of analysis or reasoning of its own.

Thirdly, the counsel said, the petitioners had simply requested the high court to order removal of obstructions in front of their houses. But what the high court ordered was beyond the scope of this prayer, he added.

In their appeals, the petitioners argued that the high court had travelled beyond its jurisdiction in deciding factual and technical controversy in a writ jurisdiction, which could not be resolved without recording of evidence. They wondered whether the high court was competent to discuss technical aspect of the BRT project in the absence of any technical expertise and without acquiring any expert in the relevant field.

The PHC, while deciding the case, had held that the concept of town planning was Greek to the decision-makers as Peshawar was mainly fed by a single traffic artery of Khyber Road. Due to this factor alone, Khyber and branch roads are mainly congested, but no efforts were made to relocate the wholesale market outside the main city; besides, the idea of ring road for the city that emerged in the 1980s also succumbed to the prescribed procedure, especially for a mega project.

The high court had deplored that the dysfunctional PC-1 of the project was approved from the PDWP and CDWP in April/May 2017 at a cost of Rs49.5 billion without completion of the detailed design. Later, the project’s cost was revised to Rs66.4bn on May 23, 2018.

The BRT is part of the ADP (annual development plan) of the province and hence enjoys the approval of the provincial legislation, the appeals argued.

Published in Dawn, February 4th, 2020