By Ardeshir Cowasjee

THIS moth-eaten country of ours was not created through conquest or by marauders. It was made for us by an able man of the law, through his will-power and his ability to negotiate. His abiding dictum handed down to his countrymen was that the first duty of any government is to impose and maintain law and order.

This has not happened in the 60 years of the life of this country, and consequently it and we have suffered.

The cake is small, the grabbers and devourers aplenty. The ignorant illiterate population of some 170 millions is multiplying at the rate of 10 per minute. But who cares?

Now, let us see what it takes to try and save an area of parkland in that battered abused city of Karachi. In the mid-1960s, sixty-two acres of a hill-top plateau, known locally as Kidney Hill, lying between Shaheed-e-Millat and Karsaz Roads was notified as a ‘Park & Recreation Area’ and named KDA Scheme 32, ‘Falaknuma’ and notified under the Karachi Development Authority Order of 1957. As required under law, a series of public notices were inserted in the press inviting objections to the scheme.

As with all open spaces in Karachi, Kidney Hill was an open invitation to the land grabbers, to what are known as ‘developers,’ and to the political parties in power. Over the years, the government-administration backed mafias did their best to encroach upon sections of the park or to have plots carved out and allotted in various names, so that the builders could move in. Residents of the adjacent societies, including Faran Society and Overseas Cooperative Housing Society (OCHS), consistently complaining to the concerned authorities and political ‘leaders’ and somehow, for an unexpectedly long period, land-grabbing attempts were foiled.

In 1984, implementing a 1981 directive of President General Ziaul Haq, the Kidney Hill area was handed over to the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation. Over the next two decades, this action gave rise to multiple litigations between the government agencies and claimant societies and individuals. Finally, in January 2007, in a Supreme Court appeal filed by the OCHS challenging the 1999 inclusion of the NGO Shehri and thirteen area residents as interveners in one Constitutional Petition filed in 1990 (1314/90), a five-party ‘Agreement of Settlement’ was presented sanctioning the retention of only 20 acres of Kidney Hill (now surveyed as 55 acres: seven acres at the periphery having been nibbled away over 40 years by adjoining residents, including our worthy caretaker prime minister, Mohammadmian Soomro) as a park, and converting most of the rest to residential bungalow plots with service roads in between. Apparently, the mid-1960’s requirement for a ‘lung space’ for the then 2.5 million population of Karachi no longer existed forty years later when the city’s population had boomeranged to over 15 million!

The appeal was allowed by the Supreme Court in terms of the settlement agreement, while giving the interveners permission to seek separate remedy under the law.

This new ‘Agreement’ was signed by the Federal Government, the Sindh government, the City District Government Karachi (successor of the KDA & KMC), the managing director of the Karachi Cooperative Housing Societies Union, and the honorary secretary of the OCHS.

When presented in the Supreme Court, the OCHS’ case was disposed of in terms of the Agreement, while allowing the former interveners a period of fifteen days to approach the court in a separate additional petition. Early in Feb 2007, thirteen residents of Faran Society and the OCHS through one, to whom all had given their power of attorney as their representative, and Shehri filed Constitutional Petition 160/2007 before a division bench of the Sindh High Court which granted an ad interim order prohibiting the creation of third party interests in the Park.

Three days later, the one petitioner asked his lawyer to move an application for withdrawal/deletion of their names with immediate effect. Shortly thereafter, the members of Shehri (it being the sole petitioner left in the case) received the usual ‘threats’ from the usual quarters suggesting they too ‘get out’.

Now, which threatening organisation could possibly have forced a conscientious law abiding citizen to withdraw and state his “regret not to elaborate a reason”? Whoever, through press publicity and other contacts the situation as far as Shehri was concerned was ‘managed’.

The High Court entertained the petition which was initially defended by Abdul Hafiz Pirzada who was later superseded by Dr Faroogh Nasim and was listed before Chief Justice Sabihuddin Ahmed and a companion judge. Thereafter efforts were made to engage the firm of Malik, Chaudhry, Ahmed, Siddiqui and Waheed, which cannot appear before the Chief Justice. They politely declined.

The matter was then listed before the Division Bench of Justice Mushir Alam who last heard the matter in November 2007 when Dr Nasim brought in an advocate and stated that the gentleman was an allottee of the plot in question. This advocate was a senior gentleman, much respected by the learned Judge who angrily chastised Dr Nasim and stated that he understood that the effort made was an attempt to insure that the matter would not be heard by him.

As things happen in our land, Dr Faroogh Nasim has now been appointed Advocate General of Sindh. The matter of Kidney Hill was relisted on Jan 11, 2008 when Dr Nasim did not appear. An adjournment was sought so as to inter alia clarify whether Dr Nasim can appear on behalf of the government of Sindh despite his personal interest in the case. Action is underway to grant such permission.

Now, over to our City Nazim, young and energetic Mustafa Kamal, whose intent to do good for Karachi is not in doubt. He is the saviour of Bagh-i-Ibne Qasim, of Jheel Park, and of other open spaces in Karachi.

He has done much good, building parks and over passes and under passes (though he does tend to dig up roads and move on leaving them in a heap), and he seems to be the only man in the Karachi administration who has the will and the energy and the clout to actually get things done.

His intervention is sought in the Kidney Hill impasse. We need him to step in, study the background of the case, think about this open space under threat, and do what he can to save it for the residents of the area and for the city of Karachi. Over to you, young Mustafa.

arfc@cyber.net.pk