SCP berates Karachi commissioner for demolition of heritage sites

KARACHI: The Karachi registry of the top court has Friday chastised Commissioner Karachi Muhammad Iqbal Memon over the mushrooming of housing buildins on the heritage sites with razing of old buildings that are supposed to be safeguarded, ARY News reported.

During the Hindu Gymkhan restoration case, the Karachi registry bench headed by the Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Gulzar Ahmed took to task the civic authorities and inquired who indeed was knocking down the heritage sites and developing new buildings there?

Heritage sites are being preserved in the whole world but in Karachi all you need is to declare them dilapidated and flatten them to build commercial structures, the CJP said today.

The area contiguous to the Mausoleum of Quaid e Azam is considered heritage sites but the old buildings are being knocked down and new structures are being built, he said in a dialogue with the city commissioner.

Nobody bears pain for this city the CJP said during the case, adding that it’s your own city. You are hell-bent on destroying all the heritage, the CJP said to the civic authorties.

Top court orders demolition of Tejori Heights built on railways land

Separately today, the Karachi Registry ordered on Friday the demolition of the illegal Tejori Heights built on the railways land, and has directed the city commissioner to knock it down within a month.

The legal counsel from the Tejori Heights, built near Hasan Square, 13-D on the encroached lands of Pakistan Railways, former Senate chairman Mian Raza Rabbani, has yielded to court’s decision and has asked for some time before the reimbursement to the alottees can be done.