KARACHI, Sept 21: The Sindh High Court suspended a Karachi Building Control Authority notice against amalgamation of four plots on Thursday but allowed it to move the Supreme Court against the order within four weeks.

A division bench comprising Justices Sarmad Jajal Osmany and Ali Sain Dino Metlo was hearing a contempt application by a builder-developer against the KBCA.

The applicant said the court had disposed of his petition with a direction to the authority to approve his building plan for a 10-storey commercial complex on the amalgamated plot without waiting for a no-objection certificate from the city district government.

The applicant said the court had held that no specific permission for the city district government was required for commercialization of plots on a road or area declared commercial by the provincial government. The decision had been upheld by the Supreme Court.

The KBCA vehemently denied any non-compliance with the court order. It said besides technical objections, the main hurdle in its approval of the design submitted by the applicant builder was that the proposed amalgamation of four plots was ‘ab initio’ void under the law and regulations. It had already served a notice on the applicant to explain his position in this behalf.

It said amalgamation was illegal for more reasons than one. For one thing, the Karachi Building and Town Planning Regulations did not permit merger of plots if the total area exceeded 956.8 square yards. In the present case, the total area of the four amalgamated plots amounted to 4354 square yards. The KBCA could not allow amalgamation of plots in violation of the regulations.

Then, the KBCA submitted, amalgamation is permissible only where plots fall into the same category. A residential plot cannot be merged with a commercial plot and ‘vice versa’. Only one of the four plots sought to be amalgamated in the instant case could be said to have been commercialized by the provincial government notification commercializing Sharea Faisal.

KBCA counsel Shahid Jamil Khan submitted a sketch showing ‘the strange dimensions’ of the amalgamated plot. While one plot faced a service lane on Sharea Faisal, another was situated on Tipu Sultan Road and one each on 40-foot wide streets behind the main roads. Neither Tipu Sultan Road nor the rear streets have been commercialized by the provincial government notification, he maintained.

The applicant’s counsel argued that the objection was never raised before and that the KBCA had sanctioned amalgamation many years ago. The KBCA counsel said the authority could not allow an illegality to perpetuate and a bona fide legal mistake could be rectified at any stage.

The bench suspended the KBCA notice to the builder and allowed it to impeach its order before the Supreme Court within four weeks. The contempt application would now be heard on a date after four weeks.

SECRETARY SUMMONED: Another division bench comprising Chief Justice Sabihuddin Ahmed and Justice Yasmin Abbasy, meanwhile, directed the provincial education secretary to appear on Oct 12 to explain how 86 male and female schoolteachers were ‘unlawfully’ recruited and allowed to remain in service and draw salaries for a couple of years in Nawabshah.