KARACHI, Jan 28: The Sindh High Court asked the provincial and city governments on Tuesday to submit separate affidavits sworn by their officials concerned in respect of each and every plot of land required for the Lyari Expressway project and disputed by the owners or lessees, by Feb 19.

The stay orders against acquisition of the disputed plots by the project, or ejectment of the petitioners, or demolition of houses built on them would, meanwhile, remain effective.

About 25 petitions filed by more than 1,000 owners of plots and houses being acquired by the expressway project came up for hearing before a division bench comprising Justice Sabihuddin Ahmed and Justice Syed Ali Aslam Jafri. The petitioners counsel, including Shaukat Ali Shaikh and Ghulam Abbas Soomro, complained that the respondent governments had not complied with the court order to submit a counter-affidavit in rejoinder to every petition. They have filed identical, stereotyped and vague affidavits to counter the petitioners’ claims in general.

The petitioners say they were leased out or allotted the plots by the defunct KMC (the city government’s predecessor). The advocate-general had earlier maintained that the entire land needed for the project was owned by the Sindh government and the KMC had no power to allot it. When one of the petitioners’ counsel produced a notification evidencing transfer of land by the provincial government to the KMC, the law officer changed his stance, saying the provincial government had transferred the land to the Corporation.

The government also claimed that most of the disputed land was part of kutcha abadis. The petitioners gave a lie to the claim by submitting that colonies like the PIB were raised and regularized in 1948 but the Kachchi Abadis Act was enacted in 1987.

The bench observed that both the city and provincial governments should make specific replies to the petitions instead of wasting time on vague and evasive averments.