SHC extends stay on bypass road construction

The Sindh High Court has extended the stay on construction of a bypass road outside Tandojam on land acquired from Sindh Agriculture University.

The court gave additional advocate general Allah Bachayo Soomro a week on Tuesday to file comments on the petition.

The 6.5-kilometre bypass road is planned for the dual carriageway Hyderabad-Mirpurkhas road, to avoid passing through Tandojam. For this, 13 acres of varsity land, in addition to other pieces of land, will be acquired.

The petitioners' counsel argued that the project would adversely affect research and farming efforts on 600 acres of SAU land, adding that it would harm research zones, affect the irrigation system and environmental safety and expose the research farms to external interference.

The lawyer told the court that even the SAU registrar had highlighted the project's implications on the research land in his letters to the commissioner, deputy commission and assistant commissioner.

According to these letters, the road would divide a large area of an experimental farm into small segments, while traffic would pass through the farm as well. "The environment will become full of smoke and dust and our land will be contaminated … [this will] deteriorate the quality of agricultural produce including wheat seed produced at the farm," reads one letter.

The bypass will allegedly also render the existing drainage system useless, with the varsity's land confronting the problem of draining rainwater. A 100-acre mango orchard, producing the famous Sindhri mango, will also be badly affected.

Plus, the registrar pointed out, the varsity was likely to face confrontation from research students if it gave away the land.

Moreover, the bypass road will prevent future oil exploration by the Oil and Gas Development Company Limited in blocks reserved for this purpose, in addition to affecting existing oil supply lines. Railway tracks, a railway crossing, residential areas and an OGDCL field are located on the stretch of land in question too.

The petitioners claimed that during a recent meeting with government officials, SAU vice-chancellor Mujeebuddin Sahrai also opposed the idea of land acquisition from the varsity.

They prayed the court to order the Sindh government to withdraw the plan and instead build the bypass on one of two alternative routes.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 4^th, 2020.