Illegal connections: SHC orders removal of encroachments in North Nazimabad

‘Encroachments were carried out in connivance with union council’

KARACHI:

The Sindh High Court (SHC) ordered the police and local authorities on Thursday to remove the encroachments from an amenity plot in the North Nazimabad.

A division bench, headed by Justice Sajjad Ali Shah, also ordered the authorities to cut down illegal gas and electricity connections that have been provided there by the civic bodies. It issued notices to the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation’s (KMC) administrator, the Sindh Building Control Authority director-general, the relevant authorities in K-Electric and Sui Southern Gas Company Limited to submit compliance reports within two weeks.

The bench passed these directives while hearing a petition seeking the removal of encroachments from the land reserved for amusement purposes in Allama Iqbal Town, North Nazimabad.

The petitioners, including Karam Dad and others, had alleged that the encroachments on the amenity plot were carried out in connivance with the then union council nazim. They submitted that the court had issued directives to the Sindh Building Control Authority on several occasions, but the body has yet to clear the area of encroachments.

On Wednesday, the court had issued show-cause notice to KMC administrator Rauf Akhtar Farooqui to explain why he should not be proceeded against for alleged contempt of the court’s orders, as the same had not been implemented by him. In response to the show-cause, Farooqui filed his comments, submitting that he had received the court’s notice only yesterday, saying that the non-implementation was unintentional. The two judges discharged the show-cause notice against him and ordered the KMC administrator and the SBCA director-general to get the land cleared of encroachments within two weeks.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 29^th, 2014.