Hearing of Tori Bund petitions adjourned

Adjournment needed as SC crammed with Tori Bund petitions as well, says AAG Sindh.

KARACHI: The hearing of a public-interest litigation alleging that man-made breaches were made in the Tori and MS Bund, filed by advocate Abdul Mujeeb Pirzada, was adjourned till November 4 by a division bench of the Sindh High Court (SHC) on Friday.

The adjournment came as additional advocate-general, (AAG) Sindh, Sarwar Khan stated that the apex court is seized with the hearing of petitions on identical grounds and so the High Court cannot proceed.

The petitioner, advocate Pirzada, disputed the statement by the AAG and said that he has challenged the legality of the two-member commission which was not challenged in any other petition before the SHC or the Supreme Court.

The court, after hearing both the sides, ordered its Registrar to check whether petitions before the Supreme Court and the petition in hearing are identical or not. The bench then adjourned further proceedings till next Friday.

Pirzada had maintained that he represented the people of constituency NA-199, Sukkur, where the town of Ali Wahan is situated - the epicentre of the controversy. He had stated that the federal flood commission issued timely warnings ahead of the heavy rains in August and September this year. The irrigation department has a contingency plan whereby measures have been suggested to safeguard the safety of Sindh barrages in general and the Sukkur Barrage in particular, the petitioner maintained.

He stated that under the contingency plan and various articles of the Bund Manual and the Barrage Manual, whenever the river discharge level reaches 1.2 million cusecs, a breach is to be caused at the old head of the Nara River, which is a natural spillway of the river Indus.

In a similar super flood in 1976, a breach was caused in the bund at Ali Wahan and the same could have been done this time to save seven million people of Sindh from displacement and devastation of 2.5 million acres of land , submitted Pirzada.

He stated in the petition that breaches were caused to save agricultural lands of federal ministers, senators and MPAs at the expense of poor farmers of Sindh. It was a man-made disaster, the petitioner claimed, seeking compensation for the affected families.

The petitioner also questioned the legal basis for the notification issued by the Sindh government constituting a two-member inquiry commission consisting of two retired judges of the SHC.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 30^th, 2010.