SHC gives KMC, SBCA four weeks to file comments on activists’ plea

The Sindh High Court (SHC) has directed the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), the Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA) and others to file comments on a petition that has challenged the transfer of the financial and technical control of the KMC’s Master Plan Department to the SBCA.

Filing their petition against the transfer, Shehri-CBE and other civil rights activists said the KMC’s Master Plan Department and the SBCA are two independent entities, and both of them are governed by separate laws.

They said that on November 6, 2012, the then local government had assigned all the administrative, financial and technical control of the KMC’s Master Plan Department to the command and control of the SBCA’s director general.

The petitioners’ counsel said that after the notification, the SBCA issued several directions to the KMC’s Master Plan Department, including the opening of bank accounts exclusively under the control of the SBCA and depositing all the funds in those accounts.

He contended that the impugned notification regarding the transfer of the KMC’s Master Plan Department to the SBCA is unlawful because both departments are governed by separate laws, while the local government secretary has no jurisdiction to administer town planning subject under the Sindh Building Control Ordinance or its regulations.

He said the government’s decision to transfer the KMC’s Master Plan Department to the SBCA is detrimental to city town planning because other relevant departments, including transport & communication, engineering and municipal services, are still under the control of the KMC.

The court was requested to declare as illegal the impugned notification regarding the transfer of the KMC’s Master Plan Department to the SBCA and the consequent order to transfer bank accounts to the administrative control of the SBCA.

An SHC division bench headed by Justice Syed Hasan Azhar Rizvi said that none of the respondents have filed their comments on the petition, and directed all the official respondents to file their comments within four weeks.

The court directed the office to fix the case after four weeks, and continued the interim order that restrains the SBCA from operating and using the funds or bank accounts of the KMC’s Master Plan Department until further orders.