Court orders eviction of occupants to raze multistorey buildings.

SUKKUR -- Sindh High Court's SukAkur bench on Saturday repeated its order for the demolition of illegally raised structures, including a large number of multistorey buildings, in the city.

Almost all of the buildings ordered to be razed are built by private parties. They are either standing on state-owned properties, like amenity plots, or have annexed parts of such plots.

After going through various surveys and revenue record, the court had a few months back ordered demolition of all such structures in order to retrieve state-owned properties. It had allowed considerable time to the district administration and relevant departments to get these properties vacated from their occupants and had also set deadlines. However, the eviction process could not be completed as yet for various reasons.

The district administration with the assistance of law enforcement agencies launched several anti-encroachment drives in different areas during the period and, at some places, faced resistance from the affected people.

The issue of razing multistorey buildings remained unresolved due to complications as some of them housed major private hospitals and in some case a large number of families had to arrange for alternative accommodations for themselves.

Panic and chaos prevails in the city's targeted areas following SHC's back-to-back directives for execution of its demolition orders over the last few months.

On Saturday, the bench comprising Justice Aftab Ahmed Gorar and Justice Faheem Ahmed Siddiqi, issued its order which was reserved on Thursday after the latest hearing of a constitutional petition (No. D-754/2008) by a citizen, Sajjadullah Qureshi, against...