Court orders: Construction resumes on three Clifton projects

Hindu community says construction poses serious threat to ancient temple.

KARACHI: Construction work on the Bahria Town projects in Clifton resumed on Wednesday after six months of inactivity as the Sindh High Court (SHC) called back its stay order on the construction of a flyover and two underpasses.

On the application filed by the real estate firm's counsel, advocate Khalid Jawed Khan, seeking permission to resume work on the site after fulfilling legal requirements, the court bench headed by Justice Munib Akhtar granted the request.  Soon after the court's approval, labourers returned to the project's construction site which is worth Rs1.8 billion.



Earlier, on October 17 the SHC had thrown out the Defence Housing Authority's (DHA) petition against the developers who had dug up the main road connecting the AT Naqvi Roundabout to Park Towers in order to build two flyovers and an underpass to improve the traffic flow.

However, when the work started, DHA went to court claiming that the developers had failed to obtain an Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) report, which was mandatory under the law and the construction was being carried out without compliance with requirements listed in environmental protection laws.

DHA's intervention led Justice Akhtar to order that all construction related to the project should be stopped immediately. He also directed the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) to first obtain an EIA approval from the Sindh Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) and submit it to the court before carrying out any construction.

Subsequently, Sepa conducted the environmental assessment and submitted its report, which was also challenged by the DHA. However, the SHC division bench, headed by Justice Sajjad Ali Shah, passed orders to uphold the report and dismissed DHA's petition.

The Hindu community, on the other hand, believe the construction poses a serious threat to the ancient Shree Ratneshwar Mahadev Temple - situated in the vicinity of the construction site - was not happy with the decision.

Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, the Pakistan Hindu Council's patron-in-chief and a lawmaker, said that the temple was at the risk of being destroyed due to the construction work. He warned that the Hindus would protest if the temple was damaged.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 23^rd, 2014.