Not maintainable: Petition against conversion of KBCA into SBCA dismissed

Sindh government in February 2011 had extended functions & role of KBCA to Sindh province & all of its districts.

KARACHI:

A petition against the conversion of the Karachi Building Control Authority (KBCA) into Sindh Building Control Authority, extending the jurisdiction of the regulatory body to entire Sindh, was dismissed here on Friday by a division bench of Sindh High Court comprising Justice Maqbool Baqar and Justice Nadeem Akhtar.

Sindh government in February 2011 had extended the functions and role of the KBCA, earlier limited to Karachi division only, to entire Sindh province and all of its districts.

Nisar Mujahid advocate, counsel for petitioner Mir Ali Taqi advocate submitted that KBCA was created in 1981 as a regulatory organ of the Karachi Development Authority (KDA) and the Sindh government therefore had no powers to amend a regulation issued by the Board of Governors of the KDA.

After hearing initial arguments, the division bench, however, dismissed the petition in liminae holding that provincial government has the power to change the nomenclature (name) of any government body regulatory or else and also to extend its jurisdiction within the territorial limits of the province.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 11^th, 2012.