Encroached Karachi

he Supreme Court’s standing orders on removing encroachments across the board in Karachi are on the spot. The apex court’s Karachi Registry also directed the Karachi commissioner to demolish a 15-storey residential building, and ensure that the affectees are duly compensated. Seized with the issue of Karachi’s developmental mosaic, the top court has maintained a categorical stance and wants compliance with its orders, so that all houses and structures built on fake leases and amenity plots are pulled down.

Daredevil illegal constructions, especially, on the city’s three drainage arteries, have converted the metropolitan into a disdained slum. It results in flooding and to this day has hampered provision of proper civic amenities to millions of residents. As pointed out by the top court, while referring to malpractices in planning and allotments, the major concern is where the authorities had disappeared when the city’s landmass was being encroached and haphazard concretes raised. This hints at connivance on the part of revenue, municipality and the provincial authorities for a price tag. And all this goes on at the cost of ruining the city and leaving it at the mercy of ad hocism and a criminal psyche.

The court has time and again castigated the provincial government and the concerned bodies on their performance, urging them to rectify their deeds. Karachi needs a new master plan of development, and should fall under an effective and empowered local government. Seized under a suo motu, the judiciary has voiced for proper dissemination of powers and an accountable administration for the largest cosmopolitan of the country. It’s high time for the executive to deliver on its mandatory count, and pull the city out of shambles.

Karachi’s biggest enigma is that it is ghettoised into cantonments, corporate societies and an unmanned municipal sway. Coupled with this is the menace of corruption and so-called China cutting. As far as removal of encroachments and erasing of illegal structures is concerned, there shouldn’t be any pick and choose.