KARACHI, May 11: A Sindh High Court division bench on Thursday ordered demolition of two unauthorized buildings in Azam Basti, an old kutchi abadi near Mehmoodabad, Jamshed Town.

A petitioner, Anwar Shah, complained that his neighbour has raised a ground-plus-two-floor building consisting of flats on plot R-98, Azam Basti, Mehmoodabad, and the Karachi Building Control Authority was doing nothing about it.

The authority indulged in pick and choose and there was no uniform application of the law and rules. The court asked the KBCA to explain the correct position, including its jurisdiction in respect of kutchi abadis and constructions raised therein before the promulgation of the Sindh Building Control Ordinance, 1979, and the Karachi Building and Town Planning Regulations, 2002.

Appearing for the KBCA, Advocate Shahid Jamil Khan submitted that all areas and buildings within the municipal limits of Karachi, except cantonments, the Defence Housing Authority and military installations and buildings and constructions raised before 1979, were subject to provisions of the 1979 ordinance and the 2002 regulations and fell within the limit of the authority. There were 549 kutchi abadis in and around Karachi, out of which 328 were notified as such by the provincial government.

About the buildings constructed on the plots of the respondent and the petitioner, the KBCA counsel said both were unauthorized. There was no pick and choose and regularization was done strictly in accordance with the ordinance issued for the purpose in March 2002. Neither the petitioner nor the respondent approached the KBCA under the regularization ordinance, which lapsed in March 2003, after completion of all formalities.

In all, he said, about 600 applications, duly accompanied with receipts for payment of the requisite fees, were received by the KBCA. Of these, 100 cases were decided and the rest were being processed. Had the petitioner or the respondent applied for regularization of their buildings, which were constructed after 1979, under the regularization ordinance well in time after payment of dues, their cases would have been considered. There was no pick and choose, the counsel said, and claimed that the law and rules were being uniformly applied. He requested the bench to allow the KBCA to demolish the buildings in accordance with the law.

The bench ordered demolition as requested and asked the city district government, the police and the utilities to extend all co-operation to the KBCA in evacuation and demolition of the two unauthorized buildings. It discharged the show cause notice for contempt issued to a town building controller.

TRIAL ORDERED: The administrative judge of anti-terrorism courts in Karachi on Thursday accepting charge-sheet against activists of the banned Hizbul Tehrir, facing charges under the anti-terrorism law, sent their case to the ATC-II for trial.Shahid Mehmood Sheikh, Syed Mohammad Munawar Saleh, Amir Ahmed, and printer Mohammad Arshad were arrested by the police from Nazimabad on April 28 following a raid at a printing press where pamphlets of the proscribed organisation were being published.