SHC to hear challenge to Tori Bund commission

Petitioner maintains proceedings of commission are being kept a closely guarded secret.

KARACHI: A two-member commission investigating the alleged breaches in the Tori and MS bunds was challenged here on Tuesday by a former MNA and senior advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, Abdul Mujeeb Pirzada, who prayed the Sindh High Court (SHC).

The petition will be heard by a division bench of the SHC consisting of Chief Justice Sarmad Jalal Osmany and Justice Abdul Hadi Khoso on Wednesday.

The proceedings of the commission are being kept a closely guarded secret and it was illegally constituted, the petitioner maintained in an application for a stay on its proceedings.

Suing its two members, Justice (retd) Zahid Kurban Alvi and Justice (retd) Ghulam Nabi Soomro by name, the petitioner said that the commission was illegally constituted and therefore powerless to decide such an important issue. The commission should have been constituted under the Federal Act of 1966, which is the only legal instrument available so far, the petitioner maintained.

Pirzada told The Express Tribune that he filed the petition on behalf of the seven million people of Sindh who were forced to leave their hearth and home because of a manmade disaster.

He said that he has maintained in the petition that the breaches were caused to protect the sugar mill owned by Senator Islamuddin Shaikh, the agricultural land of federal minister Syed Khursheed Shah, the flour mill of Pehlaj Rai, who is a special assistant to the Sindh chief minister, the agricultural lands of MPA Syed Javed Shah and other influential people.

“I have demanded compensation for the families of the hundreds of victims of the flash floods due to the breaches,” he said, adding that standing crops over 2.5 million acres of land were devastated by the twin breaches.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 6^th, 2010.