No tables, chairs on Burns Road footpaths: SHC

Court seeks implementation report in seven days

KARACHI:

The chairs and tables on the pavements of Burns Road should be removed within three days, read the Sindh High Court (SHC) order regarding reopening Burns Road Food Street for traffic in the evening.

The court annulled both district administration notifications, as stated in the written order.

"Burns Road and the surrounding streets should be reinstated to their previous state," stated the written order. All chairs, tables and encroachments should be removed, it said.

The order required the district administration to submit an implementation report to the court within seven days. It instructed the South district deputy commissioner not to provide any justification for street closure.

The court order read that blocking Sharah-e-Liaquat, Burns Road, Fresco Chowk and the six adjoining streets for traffic was tantamount to changing land use and restricting access of people to public thoroughfare.

The petitions had been filed by the residents of Burns Road, who had expressed their grievances against closing the popular food street at Burns Road to vehicles and limiting it to pedestrians after 7pm.

It allowed restaurants to put tables and chairs on the pavement along the road to serve customers. According to the counsel for the petitioners, it inconvenienced the residents as well as public at large due to access to the road being cut off.

Even access to their home after 7pm was difficult, the counsel for the residents of the Burns Road said.

The counsel reminded that orders already passed by the Supreme Court held that public lands, roads and thoroughfares cannot be used for any other purpose except for public purposes. They said that encroachment upon public land cannot be allowed nor such land can be used for commercial purposes.

The SHC bench stated in the order that the factual and legal position of the assistant advocate general and the South district deputy commissioner could not justify the declaration of Burns Road as a food street or its closure. It observed that notifications in this regard only related to traffic plan suggesting alternate routes. However, there was no notification or order or decision by any competent authority declaring the above main roads of Burns Road as 'Food Street'.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 28^th, 2023.