SC seeks details of buildings illegally occupied in Lyari

The Supreme Court on Thursday took notice of the performance of the Sindh Building Authority and other civic departments as well as of their failure to remove encroachment from Evacuee Trust Property buildings, and directed the advocate general of Sindh to submit details of the occupied buildings.

Hearing a petition against unauthorised constructions on Evacuee Trust Property land in Lyari’s Moosa Lane, a three-member bench headed by Justice Gulzar Ahmed observed that despite the issuance of directions by the court, no action had been taken against the illegal constructions.

The court observed that the encroachments, including the unauthorised constructions, had been set up under the noose of the SBCA and ETP officials, and inquired the provincial law officer what action had been taken against delinquent officers who allowed the encroachments.

It said no government official took notice of the encroachments of government properties, and inquired the law officer what would happen if someone encroached upon the Sindh Assembly or the Supreme Court buildings.

The bench further stated that the entire state machinery had failed to vacate the government property.

Acting advocate general Sarwar Khan submitted that the unauthorised construction was raised due to negligence on the part of the SBCA and ETP officials, and action should be taken against them.

An SBCA official submitted that ETP buildings had been encroached due to a poor law and order situation in Lyari in the past couple of years.

The court directed the chief secretary to get vacated the evacuee property from the occupants and submit details of proceedings with regard to action taken against the delinquent officers of the SBCA and ETP.

Delimitations

The Sindh High Court dismissed the petitions of Syed Jalal Mehmood Shah, Sardar Usman and others, who had challenged the preliminary delimitations of national and provincial assemblies’ constituencies in Jamshoro and Naushahro Feroze.

The petitioners said the preliminary delimitations of NA-211, NA-212, PS-80, PS-81, PS-33, PS-34 and PS-35 were challenged before the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) with the argument that the delimitation commissioner had failed to follow the guidelines set under the Election Act’s Section 20, which deals with the principles of delimitations.

They claimed that the delimitations were made in favour of a particular group of candidates, which negates the principles of law and fair and transparent elections.

They requested the court to set aside the preliminary delimitations and direct the ECP to issue the notification of preliminary delimitations after considering the objections and proposals of the petitioners in conformity with the election laws.

After hearing the arguments of the ECP’s counsel, the high court’s division bench headed by Justice Mohammad Ali Mazhar dismissed the petitions as not maintainable.

The court said the law provides the right to file a proposal to the ECP for making some changes in the preliminary delimitations, but after considering all the cogent factors it is the sole responsibility of the ECP to finalise the delimitations.

The bench said that there is no variation of population in all the Jamshoro constituencies, which is well within the allowable variation of 10 per cent.

The judge said the ECP also honoured the reasonable and sensible proposal placed before it, and even in the final delimitations’ order, it directed shifting some area from one constituency to another considering public convenience, geographical compactness and homogeneity.