There are allegations of corruption in the project, and the Peshawar High Court on Nov 14, 2019 had referred the controversial project to the FIA for a thorough probe besides formulating 35 questions. The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government moved appeals through officials of several government departments in the Supreme Court seeking to overturn the high court judgment. During the hearing of the appeals on March 17, the top court made it clear that it intervenes in government development projects only if they fail the legal test of transparency, there are doubts concerning conflict of interest, or fail scrutiny by auditors; otherwise monitoring of such projects is not the court’s job. The court put off the proceedings for one month, and till then the stay earlier granted by it against the Nov 14, 2019 PHC order for a FIA probe into the BRT project will continue. The planners ‘assured’ the SC that they would ‘complete positively’ the scheme by the end of July this year, and said suggestions that the cost of the project had ballooned beyond Rs100 billion from the initial projected cost of Rs49 billion were mere rumours as the project would be completed within Rs69 billion.
It has long been felt that Peshawar needs a proper rapid public transit system because of a fast increasing urban population. The PHC in its November decision has also taken the K-P government to task for not taking steps to ease congestion on the city roads.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 19th, 2020.
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