On the clock: Cantonments to take down illegal billboards on Sharae Faisal

SC give two cantonment boards 24 hours to remove large outdoor hoardings

KARACHI: The Supreme Court (SC) has given on Thursday two cantonment boards in Karachi to take down illegal billboards on Sharae Faisal by today (Friday).

The apex court larger bench, headed by Justice Amir Hani Muslim and comprising justices Sheikh Azmat Saeed and Khilji Arif Hussain, expressed annoyance that its earlier directives in the case of illegal billboards along the city's main artery have yet to be implemented even though the deadline has passed. The bench was hearing the Karachi law and order suo motu case at the Karachi registry.

The proceedings were initiated on an application by the Karachi Cantonment Board, which had challenged the Sindh High Court order that had declared excessive advertisement tax imposed by the board on private outdoor advertisement boards, as illegal.

On August 21 last year, the apex court had ordered the 17 civic agencies, including the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, the cantonment boards, Defence Housing Authority and Civil Aviation Authority, to remove all the outdoor advertising hoardings that violated the regulations.

During Thursday's proceedings, the bench came down hard on the representatives of Karachi and Faisal cantonment boards in whose jurisdictions oversized hoardings were still not removed.

Justice Hani observed that the court had repeatedly issued directives in this regard but giant outdoor advertising boards were still present atop commercial plazas and on the footpaths along the thoroughfare and confronted whether or not they met the regulations in respect of their size, etc.

Taking serious notice of failure of authorities in complying with the court's repeated orders, the bench members ordered clearing the rooftops and footpaths along the city's main thoroughfare by today. If they fail to do so, the three judges instructed that the chief executive officers of the two cantonment boards to personally appear in court with written explanations on why they failed to implement their orders.

The bench also directed the representative of the Karachi commander of the Pakistan Navy to submit a statement regarding removal of such illegal signboards from their limits. Notices were also issued to the attorney general and deputy attorney general to submit replies of the federal government regarding powers of the cantonment boards to impose and recover the advertisement tax.

State land and its caretaker

The same SC bench restrained the provincial government from transferring the province's top land revenue officer without prior permission from the court. It also ordered the senior member of the Board of Revenue (BoR) to probe the utilisation of Rs4 billion for the registration and verification of unregistered state lands in Karachi.

The judges questioned the utilisation of Rs4 billion by BoR to get record of state lands in the city verified through outsourced projects, which failed to match the 1985 records available on micro-film.

It directed the senior member, Rizwan Memon, to probe how this large amount of public money was utilised, as the private firm had failed to successfully perform the task of compiling properties' record.

Finding the turf war between mafias supported by political groups to illegally occupy state lands, the apex court had in 2011 ordered a survey of all the unregistered precious state properties in the port city.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 11^th, 2016.