Daily Times

The scrapping of the seven kilometres long signal-free corridor from Qartaba Chowk, Jail Road, to Liberty Chowk (Main Boulevard, Gulberg) is a significant decision taken by the Lahore High Court (LHC). The court has ordered the stoppage of work on this ill-conceived project that was initiated all at once in an arbitrary style by the Punjab government while violating all the existing laws of the land. There were two important aspects of the decision. First, the bench set aside the environmental impact assessment report by the Director General of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for being without lawful authority. Secondly, the court clipped the powers of the Lahore Development Authority to launch any such project. The court declared that the launching of such projects was the mandate of an elected local government under the Punjab Local Government Act, 2013. Once again the bench ordered the LDA/contractors to remove all construction equipment and ensure free flow of traffic that has been disrupted at the Gulberg Roundabout due to the government’s apathy towards the sufferings of citizens. The construction of this signal-free corridor was first challenged in February this year when the government started felling trees in an inexplicable hurry without considering the devastating impact of this project on the city’s environment, culture and its inhabitants. The plan was a glaring example of poor planning and the government’s wrong set of priorities that has been obsessed with the craze of widening roads and building signal-free corridors while ignoring more urgent needs of the masses. In fact the government is bent upon facilitating a comparatively small section of society comprising seven percent that owns vehicles while the rest of the citizens, who do not own vehicles, are treated like the children of a lesser god. They are being belatedly deprived of their right of even walking on foot along luxury roads that are more and more being reserved for the elite and their costly saloons. The petitioners in the case have argued that the corridor would pose serious health hazards. There were hospitals located along the route, and the idea of construction of four pedestrian bridges would cause hardship to patients, noise and other pollution, and have a major deleterious environmental impact.

The government should provide some alternative to control the traffic mess by introducing a mass transit system. The city should not be deprived of greenery in the name of development. Pedestrians are also the citizens of this country and they should not be deprived of already scanty spaces available for walking along roads in Lahore that was once called a city of gardens. The judiciary’s intervention in this case of public interest can only be welcomed. It assures to protect citizens’ rights at the hands of merciless rulers. The latter may challenge the decision in the Supreme Court to fulfil their ill-planned agenda, but it will be interesting what arguments they muster to try and overturn the LHC verdict. *