The Lahore High Court (LHC) has directed the Punjab government to get the land around the Benazir Bhutto Airport demarcated.
Disposing of a petition filed by the airport manager, Justice Saghir Ahmed Qadri of the LHC Rawalpindi bench on Thursday directed the revenue authorities of Rawalpindi to mark out the CAA land within 30 days.
Standing counsel for the federation, Babar Ali informed the court that the aviation authority had been finding it difficult to locate its land as many portions of the airport have been encroached upon by individuals.
The lawyer said the CAA had time and again written to the revenue authorities of the city requesting them to mark out the land. “The authority wants to put a fence around the airport due to security purposes,” Ali said.
He maintained that CAA had acquired over 600 acres of land in four different revenue estates of the area in 1966 for establishing an international airport.
The authority could not get its land formally demarcated after it was transferred to its name and as the time passed many empty spaces were taken over by the encroachers alongside the Airport Road and recently built Rawal Road.
The CAA counsel further said, the area from where the planes make a “formation to land” is especially insecure and the western side of the areas also needed to be fenced.
They CAA lamented that they had requested the revenue authorities to have the land demarcated many times in the past. A letter was also written to the chief minister Punjab last year, but his orders to the Rawalpindi authorities fell on deaf ears. After the court direction, the revenue authorities have 30 days to do this work and if they fail to do so, CAA could move contempt of court proceedings against them, Ali said.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 17th, 2011.
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