The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Tuesday restrained the Malir Development Authority (MDA) from taking adverse action, including cancellation of allottees’ plots, in Taiser Town’s Scheme 45 over unpaid dues.
The interim order came on a petition of allottees against the cancellation of their plots by the MDA. The petitioners’ counsel submitted that the MDA had published advertisement in newspapers, directing the allottees to make payments of their dues, failing which their allotments would be cancelled.
The counsel told the court that most of the petitioners had already made entire payments towards the occupancy value as well as other charges of the plots, and the remaining petitioners were also willing to pay the entire amount of dues provided that the MDA was directed to remove encroachments, issue allotment orders and hand over possession of their plots. He requested the court to restrain the authority from cancelling the plots.
A division bench, headed by Justice Aqeel Ahmed Abbasi, issued notices to the MDA and other respondents and restrained the authority from taking any adverse action against the allottees, including the cancellation of their plots. The court also directed the petitioners to make payments of their dues in respect of their plots; however, such payments shall be subject to the final order to be passed by it.
The counsel for the MDA submitted that the Sindh Katchi Abadi Authority issued a notification claiming certain pieces of land in sector 45,56 and 47 of Taiser Town’s Scheme 45 to be part of a Katchi Abadi and took over possession of the lands forcibly. He requested the court to issue a direction that the possession of subject plots should not be handed over to the petitioners.
The court also directed the petitioners to file an amended title of the petition by impleading the Sindh Katchi Abadi Authority as a respondent in the case, and ordered all parties to file their respective replies to the petition. It directed the Sindh Katchi Abadi Authority’s relevant officer to appear on the next date of the hearing.
MPO orders set aside
The SHC set aside orders for the preventive detention of 10 more activists of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-London under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, observing that the home secretary had no lawful authority to issue the detention orders.
The court had earlier struck down the preventive detention of 70 activists of the MQM-L and the Pashtoon Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) under the MPO law as unlawful.
Petitioners Razia Sultana, Shahid Khan, Mehnaz Kashif and others had submitted in their petitions that the Sindh government had detained Furruk Baig, Zeeshan, Murtaza Ahmed Khan, Mohammad Rashid Zahoori, Faez, Mohammad Jibran, Furqan Khan, Noor Hussain, Rizwan Malik and Masroof Ahmed, activists of the MQM-London, under the MPO law for 30 days without any due process of law.
They said the detention orders were issued over the blocking of a road by MQM-L activists during a rally.
A division bench, headed by Justice Adnan Iqbal Chaudhry, observed that the grounds for detention matters were identical that the IGP had informed the home department that each detainee was instigating and provoking public to block roads and highways and to organise sit-ins, which might have disturbed peace and tranquility and created serious law and order situations.
The court observed that it was not the case of the Sindh government that the grounds for detention were set out separately in any other document.
It said it had already passed a judgment in other identical cases that neither the provincial cabinet nor the provincial law officer seemed to be aware of the fact that Section 26 of the MPO Ordinance, which had previously enabled delegation of powers and that too only to the district magistrate, had been omitted for the province of Sindh along with Sub-section (2) of Section 3 vide Sindh Laws (Amendment) Ordinance, 2001, published in the gazette on November 28, 2001. The high court observed that such ordinance was a protected legislation under Article 270AA of the constitution until repealed.
It observed that the provincial cabinet could not have invoked Section 26 of the MPO Ordinance on April 27, 2020, to delegate powers to the home secretary for issuing a detention order of a citizen.
It said the home secretary had no lawful authority to issue detention orders under Section 3(1) of the MPO Ordinance and declared that the impugned detention orders were issued without lawful authority. The court set aside the detention orders and ordered the release of the detained persons if they were not required in other cases.
