Acting Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Justice Gulzar Ahmed issued the orders during a meeting on removal of encroachments from the city, held at Supreme Court Karachi Registry.
The meeting was attended by senior officials including Karachi Development Authority (KDA) Director General Sami Siddiqui and Municipal Commissioner Dr Saifur Rehman.
During the meeting, KDA officials submitted a report on the ongoing anti-encroachment drive, besides presenting past maps and images of the city to the acting chief justice.On the occasion, Justice Gulzar pointed out encroachments on different lakes and parks in the city. He ordered to continue the drive uninterrupted and restore old parks and lakes.
The acting chief justice directed for restoring the city to its actual condition 30 years ago, warning that no hurdle would tolerated in the way of the anti-encroachment drive.
Justice Gulzar said he wanted to see what action was taken against land mafia, adding that they wanted to see clean and green Karachi. He also pointed to illegal occupation of ‘Cheel Kothi’ in the city’s PECHS area and ordered its recovery.
Expressing his displeasure with Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA) officials, the acting chief justice said if they had been dutiful then Karachi would not have been in the state it is today.“You acted as facilitators in illegal occupation of lands in the city,” he remarked.
Justice Gulzar also ordered railways officials to immediately remove all encroachments on the route of Karachi Circular Railway.
Railways officials said they had launched a clean-up drive on the orders of the apex court and will ensure removal of all encroachments.
The Pakistan Railways (PR) will begin a “grand operation” from Monday for the removal of encroachments along both tracks of the Karachi Circular Railway (KCR), officials said.The KCR was commissioned in 1964, originally to help employees of the Pakistan Railways travel between their jobs at and around the City and Cantonment railway stations and their residences in Karachi’s eastern neighbourhoods.
The service became a full circle of 44km in 1970 and connected Karachi’s four main work areas: the port, the Sindh Industrial Trading Estate (SITE), the city’s central commercial areas such as Saddar and the Landhi Industrial Area.
The KCR remained the public transport of choice for the people of Karachi till 1984 when the number of its trains was reduced. Reasons for the move included lack of maintenance and repair, a yawning gap between rising expenditure due to higher fuel and operational costs and decreasing revenue due to subsidised tickets and the government’s inability to spend money on the improvement of tracks and stations.
According to the Karachi Mass Transit Cell, the number of level crossings points where a railway line crosses a road or any other thoroughfare also increased in the city, causing KCR trains to take longer to complete their journey. At one stage, there were 34 level crossings on the KCR route.
The KCR finally shut down in 1999, forcing thousands of its daily users to travel by buses.
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