KARACHI: SHC asks Mohtasib to restrict inquiry: Mismanagement in KBCA
KARACHI, April 15: The Sindh High Court asked the provincial ombudsman on Friday to confine his ongoing probe to the overall maladministration in the Karachi Building Control Authority. Clarifying an order of September 2004, a division bench, comprising Chief Justice Sabihuddin Ahmed and Justice Maqbool Baqar, said it required the ombudsman to look into the KBCA functioning to ascertain whether it was performing its legal duties.
The order did not cover raising of academic questions that could be answered by a proper appreciation of law rather than by eliciting opinion.
The observation came on a KBCA application objecting to a questionnaire issued by the ombudsman’s office to the city nazim and referred by him to the authority. Among the questions asked was ‘whether the KBCA was a non-entity and or something of a misnomer? Please let me know whether there was any notification or law to back its existence?’
Another question asked: Is the Sindh Building Control Ordinance meant for the whole of the province or just for Karachi? What is meant by the word ‘area’ in Section 4(3) of the SBCO. Yet another question was aimed at ascertaining whether there was any notification in the field that allowed the implementation of the building control and town planning regulations.
KBCA counsel Shahid Jamil Khan alleged that certain vested interests were misleading the probe and targeting the authority itself instead of allowing the ombudsman to focus on any maladministration in it. The authority had itself moved a constitutional petition for appropriate amendments to the SBCO to enable it to discharge its legal obligations. The probe should not obstruct the KBCA working but help streamline it, the counsel said.
He did not press the application after the clarification and it was disposed of as withdrawn by the bench.
FALSE AFFIDAVITS: The bench, meanwhile, asked Additional Advocate-General Sarwar Khan to ascertain the whereabouts of a person missing for two months. Petitioner Ikram alleged that his brother, Amanullah, was picked up by personnel of a law enforcement agency.
The chief city police officer appeared on Friday and submitted on oath that the alleged detainee had neither been arrested nor held by the police in custody. He was not required in any case, according to his information, the officer said.
The bench asked the AAG to make more inquiries and submit a statement on April 21, the next date of hearing. It asked the law officer to caution the police against swearing false affidavits.
Another petition filed by Advocate Khwaja Naveed Ahmed on behalf of Zainab Bibi for recovery and production of her husband, Abdul Qadir, could not be taken up for paucity of time. The petitioner said Qadir was held earlier also but released after seven months. He was picked up again on Nov 12, 2004, and had not been heard of since.
The petitioner said there was no case against her husband and he had been unlawfully confined only because he was related to Khalid Mohammad Shaikh and Yusuf Ramzi. Qadir’s brother, Abdul Karim, was also under detention.
PROPERTY TAX: A division bench, comprising Justices Anwar Zaheer Jamali and Syed Zawwar Hussain Jaffery, issued notices to the Faisal Cantonment Board and other respondents for May 5 in a petition moved by Khwaja Mohammad Asghar through Advocate Mohammad Nawaz Shaikh. The petitioner said he bought 400-square-yard plot (No B-173) in Block 12 of Gulistan-i-Jauhar (Scheme 36) and paid all the dues.
The property, Advocate Shaikh submitted, fell within the jurisdiction of the KDA (since merged into the city district government), which recovered all the dues. The cantonment board now claimed that the area under its jurisdiction had been extended to include the subject property. Without showing any notification, it demanded Rs 96,000 from the petitioner for granting permission to build a house on it.
He requested the court to declare the demand, purported to have been made as a tax on transfer of immovable property, illegal.
Another division bench, meanwhile, adjourned a Pakistan Television petition against recovery of Rs 5.6 million from it as property tax.
The petitioner said it was controlled by the federal government, which also appointed its chairman and directors, and its property was thus exempted under the West Pakistan Urban Immovable Property Act.
Contesting the petition, Additional Advocate-General M. Ahmed Pirzada argued that the PTV was a corporation. It was a commercial organization and not a utility. It was liable to pay property tax like State Bank and other autonomous federal organizations.