SC told Margalla tunnel project shelved

[Salman]

SC told Margalla tunnel project shelved

ISLAMABAD, March 29: The government has shelved the Rs2 billion tunnel project in the Margalla Hill National Park area to connect the federal capital with the district of Haripur.

The information was put before a three-judge Supreme Court bench, comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, Justice Khilji Arif Hussain and Justice Tariq Parvez, that had taken up a plea of the Margalla Hills Society on a suo motu.

In October 2005, the society’s president, Roedad Khan, invited the attention of the chief justice towards the project, stating that Margalla Hills were being threatened by the plan to construct the tunnel to link Haripur with Islamabad through an expressway.

The society said Islamabad was fast running short of prime land in the city centre that was why the Capital Development Authority (CDA) was planning to build the tunnel to create more premium real estate beyond the hills.

Launched on the directives of former President Pervez Musharraf, the project was floated by powerful real estate agents to reap windfall gains, it added.

It deplored that the project would not only destroy the ecology of the area but would also be extremely hazardous for the environment. Declared in 1980 as the national park, the area has already been disfigured, decimated and defiled by stone crushers who have destroyed its rock, soil, fauna and flora.

Home to a diversity of plants, birds and animals, the Margalla Hills National Park is a protected area from all kinds of developments as it constitutes the lungs of the federal capital.

Roedad Khan in his comments submitted to the registrar of the apex court on April 26, 2007, had also alleged that Malik Riaz of Bahria Town was the moving spirit behind the project.

Haripur having a population of 692,000 or 3.9 per cent of the entire KP is already connected by good roads to Islamabad via the Nickolson Monument but the proposed tunnel is aimed at annexing the land of the province for housing projects, the society had argued.

On the other hand, the CDA had claimed that it was planning to construct the tunnel to expand the city and meet the edible needs of the inhabitants of the federal capital.

On Thursday, when the case was taken up by the bench, Chaudhry Ramzan, the counsel for the CDA, informed the court that the project had been deferred and for the time being it was not being considered at all. At this, the court disposed of the matter with an observation that no further action was called for.