SC extends stay against reverting DHA roads to dual carriages

Court summons Advocate General and regional transport authority secretary.

KARACHI: The Supreme Court extended a stay order on Wednesday, preventing two one-way roads in Defence Housing Authority from being reverted back to dual carriage roads.

In December 2011, DHA had converted two roads - Khayaban-e-Mujahid and Khayaban-e-Shamsheer - to one-way carriage to “ease traffic woes” and reduce environmental and noise pollution in the upscale neighbourhood. But some of the residents were not pleased with the move and at least a hundred of them took the matter to the Sindh High Court in April 2012.

They argued that the authority had gone through with the conversion without making changes to the master plan, according to which the two thoroughfares are supposed to be two-way streets.

Taking all of this into account, the high court’s division bench had ordered DHA to revert the two thoroughfares back to two-way roads. But the high court had said that if the conversion of the roads into one-way streets is in the public’s interest, then changes should be made to the master plan. Unhappy with the decision, DHA promptly headed to the apex court to move an application against the verdict.

In the plea, the authority’s lawyer, Abid Zubedi, said that Karachi’s DHA was one of the largest neighbourhoods in the country as it had been expanded from 76 acres to a whopping 8,850 acres.



He added that the area now has 37,000 residential and 10,000 commercial plots. He argued that the volume of traffic in the neighbourhood had spiked as the road network in the area had exceeded 446 kilometres following the execution of major development projects in the Phase VI, VII and VIII.

The lawyer said DHA had approached a consultancy, National Engineering Services Pakistan looking for ways that traffic bottlenecks on Khayaban-e-Shamsheer and Khayaban-e-Mujahid could be addressed. When the consultancy recommended that the two thoroughfares be converted into one-way roads, this was done after the governing board’s approval in December 2011.

Zubedi claimed that the high court had failed to consider the important fact that the roads had been converted in the larger interest of the public. He pleaded the apex court to grant leave to appeal against the SHC verdict.

On the last hearing, the apex court had suspended the implementation of the high court’s order to revert the two thoroughfares back to two-way roads.

A two-member bench headed by Justice Sarmad Jalal Osmany, issued notice to the Sindh’s advocate general, regional transport authority secretary and the private transporters to file their replies in this regard by May 16. Adjourning hearing, the judges extended stay, which was granted earlier, further preventing DHA from converting two one-way roads into dual carriage.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 16^th, 2013.