HYDERABAD, May 29: The Additional Registrar of the Sindh High Court Hyderabad circuit bench, Altaf Hussain, on Tuesday visited those parts of Right Bank Outfall Drain -II (RBOD) in Kotri taluka on which the villagers and landowners have serious reservations with regard to drain's alignment on left side of Kalri Baghar (KB) feeder canal, an off-taking canal of Kotri barrage.

The visit was conducted under an order passed by the Sindh High Court, Hyderabad bench, on May 22 on a contempt of court application, filed against the Executive Engineer of RBOD, Nasrullah Soomro, for “violating court's order” passed on April 12.

The petition, filed by Mushtaq Shoro and three others, would come up for hearing on June 1.A large number of villagers, whose lands are located in packages 5 and 6 of RBOD and likely to be used in drain's construction, gathered there to apprise the SHC official of their apprehensions.

Jagdesh R.Mullani, the counsel for contemner/executive engineer, objected over the format of visit saying that it was being paid on his request just to inspect whether any amenity was demolished. He said that his clients had not touched any sort of amenity at the disputed site.

There was a conflict between advocates of respondents and petitioners over definition of green belt which is subject matter of constitutional petition as the RBOD executive engineer claimed that real green belt existed on right side of KB where so many orchards are located.

Advocate Sundar Das, representative of Jhamatmal Jethanand, said in fact authorities excavated drain at different locations and abandoned it temporarily wherever settlements or villages existed.

The court official listened to the grievances of villagers and landowners, who gathered there and also protested against construction of drain.

The protesting villagers said that the drain was being built on the left side of KB feeder canal in violation of original project cost-I (PC-I) whereby drain's alignment was shown on canal's right side.

Mr.Hussain visited survey no-608 near Fateh Mohammad Shah graveyard where drain's excavation had taken place on an area where banana orchard existed.

The Executive Engineer said that they had not touched any amenity or building and digging was continuing at a safe distance that wouldn't affect any village. He said the drain was passing 150 feet off Chaudhry Karam Deen village.

When a representative of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Irfan Abbasi, tried to record his observation that the distance was too small and drain's saline water would cause salinity and water-logging, the official advised him to invoke jurisdiction of high court under Article 199.