PESHAWAR: Three senior lawyers have moved the Peshawar High Court against a proposed private housing scheme, claiming its management was involved in massive publicity aimed at deceiving public at large.

A petition was jointly filed by a former general secretary of Peshawar High Court Bar Association, Mohammad Ayaz Khan, Sagheer Ahmad and Saadatullah Khan, seeking directives from the high court for the government, including the tehsil municipal offices and deputy commissioners of Peshawar and Charsadda, to stop the management of the housing scheme from continuing with the publicity campaign.

They further requested the court to stop the tehsil municipal officer, Charsadda from issuing any NOC under pressure from the said housing scheme without fulfilling legal requirements.

The petitioners said from time-to-time they had been filing petitions against ‘illegal’ housing societies/schemes and some of their petitions had still been pending before the high court.

They stated that when they came to know about the claims made by the management of ‘City Housing Peshawar’ about the establishment of the said housing society, they had approached the respondents, including the TMAs in Peshawar and Charsadda, to get relevant documents of the said project, but they failed to provide any such document.

The petitioners stated that the management of the scheme had been engaged in hectic media campaign on TV channels, social media, newspapers and by installing billboards in Peshawar and other cities.

They claimed the publicity campaign was launched without fulfilling the legal formalities.

Published in Dawn, August 7th, 2023