Katchery Chowk project irks Pindi bar

Lawyers threaten to get stay as 100 chambers may be razed during construction work

RAWALPINDI:

The District Bar Association Rawalpindi while rejecting the inclusion of about 100 lawyers' chambers for demolition during the construction of the double-decker state-of-the-art Katchery Chowk underpass project has announced to get a stay if their apprehensions and objections were not removed.

“The competent authority has not taken the district bar association into confidence about the project. We will not allow the demolition of a single chamber of lawyers,” said District Bar Association Rawalpindi Secretary Malik Mubashir Rafaq while talking to The Express Tribune.

"We are not against this project but how could the authorities incorporate a large part of the lawyers' chambers and courts in the project without taking them into confidence,” he asked and added that the district dar association was neither notified nor taken into confidence for the project public hearing.

Read ‘Work on mega projects in Rawalpindi to start soon’

“The competent authority should immediately remove the objections of the district bar. If the competent authority wanted to get space by demolishing the lawyers' chambers, the lawyers should be provided compensation and alternative space according to the market rate,” he said.

He further said that “without it, whoever shows up to lay the foundation stone of the project or attempts to bring down the lawyers' chambers, he will be responsible for his own profit and loss”.

The project costing Rs3.80 billion will be carried out with state-of-the-art style, new architecture, modern European and Chinese technology.

A part of the old mosque along the main entrance of the old district courts, dozens of lawyers 'chambers, a large part of a petrol pump, a portion of the commissioner's office premises and the boundary wall of the civil defence department will be razed to make way for the project.

Preparations are under way to lay the foundation stone of the project in the last week of March.

Sources said that a meeting between bar representatives and Rawalpindi Development Authority officials was expected to be held this week on the issue.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, March 4^th, 2022.