KARACHI, Dec 2: The Sindh High Court asked the advocate-general on Monday to produce the entire record pertaining to the land being acquired for the Lyari Expressway, on Dec 23.

A special division bench passed the order when about 700 petitioners claimed, and AG Anwar Mansoor Khan denied, that the land being acquired from them was leased out to them by the KMC.

The AG told the bench, which consisted of Justice Sabihuddin Ahmed and Justice Syed Ali Aslam Jaferi, that the land belonged to the government of Sindh and could not possibly have been leased out by the municipal corporation. The lease documents, if any, had no legal validity, he added.

The petitioners’ counsel, including Shaukat Ali Shaikh, Ainuddin Khan, Ghulam Abbas Soomro and Mohammed Ilyas Khan, said the land had been transferred by the provincial government to the KMC, which leased them out to the public for residential and other purposes. They produced a few notifications to substantiate their claim.

The petitioners mostly belong to the PIB Cooperative Housing Society, Hassan Aulia village, Sher Shah, Nishtar Basti and Liaquatabad. A new petition on behalf of a Madressa in Gulshan-i-Iqbal with 400 children on its rolls was filed on Monday.

The court extended the stay in favour of all the petitioners against their dispossession till Dec 23, and asked the AG to produce on that date the land record along with affidavits sworn by the provincial government officers concerned that it was not transferred to the KMC.