A historic victory

LHC upheld a previous decision to stop construction within 200 feet of 11 heritage sites along the route

Striking a balance between the need to preserve and protect architectural and cultural heritage, and the desires of a proactive city administration is difficult but not impossible. The Lahore city administration has driven a coach and horses, no pun intended, through a raft of provisions designed to protect any number of buildings and sites within the city in order to build the Orange Line Metro Train Project — and it has been brought up short. It is rare in Pakistan for citizen activism to achieve much beyond a ripple in the Twitterverse, quickly passing, but it is a group of civil society individuals and organisations working through legal channels with the support of some very canny lawyers that finally had their day in court and won their case on August 19.

The Lahore High Court (LHC) has announced its verdict on petitions against the Orange Line and upheld a previous decision to stop construction within 200 feet of 11 heritage sites along the route. A number of these sites are deeply rooted in the cultural heritage of the city — the Supreme Court Lahore Registry, the General Post Office, the Aiwan-e-Auqaf, Saint Andrews Church and Mauj Dariya shrine to name but five — and the World Heritage Committee (WHC) of Unesco has expressed concern about the project generally.

What was missing from the project from the outset and throughout was consultation. With stakeholders from the poorest whose houses have been demolished, to the custodians of irreplaceable sites that were going to be overshadowed or otherwise threatened by a project that is anyway of doubtful utility — but the administration was tin-eared. It now is to be seen how the government will react, if it will comply with the orders of the LHC or carry on regardless. There has to be at least a suspicion that it will take the latter course. The ordinary — or not so ordinary — citizens who fought tooth and nail to protect sites of incalculable value, global assets, may yet have to gird up their loins again to fight the good fight once more. They deserve the support of all of us.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 21^st, 2016.

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