KMC restrained from razing structures on land meant for park.

KARACHI -- The Sindh High Court on Monday ruled that an eight-acre plot located in PECHS, initially meant for a park, was converted into a housing scheme after the approval of the authorities concerned.

While allowing a set of petitions, seeking declaration for lawful ownership and against dispossession of the petitioners, the two-judge bench comprising Justice Mohammad Ali Mazhar and Justice Abdul Maalik Gaddi directed the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) and other respondents not to initiate any demolition and coercive action against the petitioners.

The bench in its judgement said that it could safely be ascertained that all actions regarding the housing scheme were with the approval of the authorities concerned and the same was also endorsed by the decision of the SHC handed down in 1989.

The petitioners approached the SHC and submitted that a plot measuring eight acres and located in PECHS was sub-divided into 106 plots and out of those plots, they were the owners of their respective plots on the basis of registered sub-lease deeds.

They submitted that initially the land was reserved for an amusement park and later correspondence was initiated between PECHS and the federal ministry of works and other relevant authorities regarding conversion of the land from an amusement park to a housing scheme. Thereafter the ministry and the authorities concerned approved the proposal to utilise the land for a housing scheme.

However, the petitioner contended that the conversion of the land from an amusement park to a housing scheme was cancelled by the Karachi Development Authority (KDA) and other government departments in 1983, adding that the same was challenged before the SHC and a divisional bench had declared the action of the KDA illegal in 1989.

They further argued that in 2007 staff of...