KDA told to file comments on amenity plot’s

conversion into residential colony in North Nazimabad

By Jamal Khurshid

The Sindh High Court on Tuesday issued notices to the Karachi Development Authority and others on a petition against the conversion of an amenity plot into residential colony in North Nazimabad.

Former mayor Naimatullah Khan had filed a petition in the SHC in October 2007 against the conversion of the Taj Mahal Park ST-5 measuring six acres on Shara-e-Noor Jahan into a residential colony.

Khan, who died in 2020, had submitted in the petition that one portion of the plot, Masjid-e-Usman, was also constructed; however, all of sudden, officials of the defunct City District Government Karachi started bifurcating and demarcating small plots purportedly to be allotted to families of martyrs.

The petitioner’s counsel, Raja Qasit Nawaz, said residences had been built on an amenity plot in defiance of a restraining order of the court. He also undertook to file the amended title of the memo of the petition and implead the Karachi Development Authority, Karachi Metropolitan Corporation and other relevant authorities as respondents substituting for the defunct CDGK.

A division bench, headed by Justice Syed Hasan Azhar Rizvi, directed the counsel to file the amended title of the memo of the petition and issued notices to relevant departments, including the KDA and the KMC, with a directive to file their parawise comments within four weeks.

The petition had been pending in the SHC since October 23, 2007, and the court had ordered that no third-party interest be created by the then CDGK in the amenity plot land. The SHC has now directed the KMC to produce the record of the amenity plot in North Nazimabad on which a residential project has been built for “families displaced from various locations in Karachi”.

The court official had earlier submitted in his report that 86 small plots had been bifurcated at the land in question and construction work was being carried out. On another petition against the conversion of the amenity plot status, the court also issued notices to the Orangi Town project director, District West administration and others on a petition against the construction of a private hospital on an amenity plot meant for a sports complex in Orangi.

The petitioner, Naureen Nazli, submitted that a 2,000-square-yard plot, ST-4, situated in Orangi Town’s Sector B/14, was allotted for the purpose of a sports complex in 2002 in the name of Shuhada-e-Mashriqi Pakistan and a proper construction work was carried out by the then city government.

She submitted that officials of District West deliberately and intentionally sold out such an amenity plot to a non-government organisation that had started the construction of a hospital on it.

She said several applications had been forwarded to the officials concerned for the redress of the grievance, but no action had been taken by officials of District West and the project director of Orangi Town.

The high court was requested to cancel the allotment of the plot for a hospital as the plot was meant for the purpose of a sports complex, and to direct the district administration to remove all kinds of encroachments from it.