Saturday, November 13, 2010 E-Mail this article to a friend Printer Friendly Versi

[Lahore_Real_Estate]

LAHORE: Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed of the Lahore High Court (LHC) on Friday postponed until December 8 the hearing of dozens of petitions against commercialisation fee imposed on an old house in Gulberg.

The judge had already directed the petitioners to deposit six percent of the conversion fee and restrained the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) from resorting to any coercive action against them. The judge issued the directions on petitions moved by Tahir Zia and others. Earlier, the LDA counsel, Salman Siddiqui, submitted that the authority was framing new rules of commercialisation fees, and that time be granted to it to file a reply to the petitions. The court, giving a last opportunity to the respondent, required to do it by the next hearing whatever it has to, or file a reply to the petitions positively by then. Petitioners’ counsel Muhammad Azhar Siddique submitted that the LDA did not have powers to impose such a fee or declare a property commercial. He said the LDA was a competent authority to levy ‘betterment fee’ for the purpose of improving an area. The counsel said the petitioners had inherited a 50-year old house in Gulberg, which was under residential use of four families. However, in order to a have modest living, they also had a small personal business in a part of the house. He said the petitioners had been regularly paying the annual commercialisation fee to the LDA for the whole of the property, which was increased, more than seven times to their surprise last year. The counsel said now the amount was out of question for the petitioners in view of the poor condition and limited scope of business. He contended that in order to discharge their liabilities to the LDA the petitioners had to either take loan or sell the property, even which they could not do in view of the fact that a suit for partition with respect to that property was pending before the court. Siddique argued that by imposing the fee in question the petitioners were being denied of their fundamental rights available under article 9, 16, 23, 24 and 25 of the constitution, which did not allow imposition of the fee in question.