The Karachi registry of the Supreme Court of Pakistan has on Monday heard the case of Clifton private hospitals’ alleged land violation and ordered the Karachi Development Authority to rid all the amenity plots in the city of the encroachments.
The top court heard the petition, by petitioner Shah Muhammad, which stated that Clifton’s Ziauddin Hospital has devoured 3,500 yards of state land has encroached upon the service road. Hearing the arguments, the apex court summoned the senior director Master Plan, Waqar Memon, and with him the city’s master plan to verify the claims made by the petitioner. The civic authorities just simply do not want to discharge their duties, said the Chief Justice of Pakistan. This is your own city and you only can do something about it, the top judge said, drawing examples from how the sand and gravel dumpers have squatted over lands in Sohrab Goth. They lease an 80-yard shop but take over entire lanes of roads to park and abandon their fleet of vehicles, he said.
Karachi has been rendered helpless without anyone to take ownership of this city, he said. Separately on Monday, the Supreme Court vacated the stay orders of the Sindh High Court (SHC) against anti-encroachment operations in the port city. Hearing a case on encroachments along Gujjar and Orangi drains at the apex court’s Karachi registry, a bench headed by Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed directed the civic authorities to raze all the illegal structures at the earliest. The top court instructed them to knock down residential and commercial buildings built on pieces of land with forged leases. A Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) lawyer informed the judges that most of the stay orders were issued on petitions of fake leaseholders.
