SHC orders appointment of property survey officer for Latifabad

The Sindh High Court has ordered immediate appointment of a survey officer to conduct a survey of Latifabad which is quintessential for the urban master planning.

The bench of justices Nadeem Akhtar and Khadim Hussain Tunio on Wednesday gave one week to the senior member Board of Revenue (BOR) to appoint the survey officer.

The bench noted that though the exercise of surveying the entire Latifabad taluka may take one year, the survey officer will have to submit monthly progress report in the SHC.

The municipal commissioner of Hyderabad has been asked to provide the entire record of Latifabad to the survey officer within 15 days after his appointment.

“The city survey officer should complete the exercise of city survey in Latifabad town expeditiously,” the bench emphasised, ordering all the concerned departments to cooperate with the office in this regard.

“We are not fixing any deadline to complete the exercise, however, the officer will have to submit reports starting from February, 2023,” the bench said.

The SHC issued notices to the SMBR and MC of HMC for compliance of the order.

The Director settlement, survey and land record Muhammad Sharif informed the court that his department had already surveyed 35,606 properties so far in Latifabad.

He informed the court that the survey officers are often transferred after serving small stints which has been hampering the survey work.

Earlier, the petitioner advocate Ghulam Sarwar Qureshi argued that due to absence of the survey and first allottees certificates the officials of HMC are taking bribes from the residents of Latifabad for the property transactions.

He recalled that in view of the complaints of the citizens the HMC on September 10, 1989, passed a resolution for issuance of the first allottees certificates but that resolution could not be implemented in over three decades.

The Satellite Township of Shah Latifabad, as the town was initially named, was established during the regime of Ayub Khan in 1958.

The lawyer shared instances of three different allottees, who purchased plots from the HMC in as early as 1965, who faced the problem of multiple plot allotments.