Daily Times

Last July, the Lahore High Court upheld the decision to stop the construction of Orange Line Metro Train (OLMT) within 200 feet of the eleven heritage sites declaring that an independent expert of international standing should be asked to assess the project in terms of its impact on heritage before proceeding any further.

But the Punjab Government continued construction work, and rather than reassessing the track alignment and design, appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court as a first step asked two experts to conduct the evaluation of the project. However, the experts mimicked the positions of the two parties, Punjab Government and Civil Society who had recommended their names, making little difference to the case.

The appellants including the government, NESPAK, LDA and Lahore Mass Transit Authority collected a team of high-powered lawyers, including Advocates Shahid Hamid, Khwaja Harris and Makhdum Ali Khan along with the Advocate General of Punjab’s office to fight its case, which argues that none of the heritage sites will be damaged because of the OLMT.

For the appellants, the ‘visual impairment’ of heritage sites including Shalamar Gardens, Chauburji, Lakshmi Building, Buddu ka Awa and Gulabi Bagh, where a concrete wall of pillars supporting a train track would all but destroy one’s experience of the heritage site from afar, does not amount to damage. The federal government is also backing the project as it has not allowed visas for UNESCO’s Reactive Monitoring Mission to assess Shalamar for the last four months against repeated requests by the world heritage conservation body.

On the other hand, the respondent civil society’s case has been argued by three pro-bono lawyers, including Asma Jahangir, Azhar Siddique and Khwaja Ahmad Hossain. Their arguments can be categorised into three aspects: the legal supported by the technical and supplemented by the proposed alternative.

The strictly legal aspect of the case takes its support from the interpretation of the Antiquities Act 1975, whose Article 23 prohibits advertisements, neon signs and telephone cables near a protected antiquity. They read Article 22 on the execution of development scheme near the antiquity, which states that no new construction within two hundred feet can be undertaken without the approval of the Director (Archaeology Department), in conjunction with Article 23. The argument being that if a telephone cable is not allowed, how can a large elevated rail infrastructure be, especially if alternatives are available?

More importantly though, civil society through the presentation of Kamil Khan Mumtaz, one of the petitioners including I.A Rehman and Neelum Hussain, all honorable citizens of Lahore, presented to the Supreme Court that NESPAK’s vibration analysis, which is the basis of the government’s argument that no heritage site is at risk of structural or cosmetic damage, is completely wrong and thus unreliable in making any decision involving precious heritage. Mumtaz argued that at least three buildings: Mauj Darya Shrine, Saint Andrews Church and Lakshmi Building will fall during construction.

The issues with NESPAK vibration analysis are multifold. Firstly, the distance used to calculate the vibrations is 21 feet shorter for elevated viaduct because NESPAK calculated this distance from the centre of the pillar rather than the edge of the base construction, from where vibrations will actually be sent to heritage sites. Similarly, the distance for cut and cover section is 15 feet shorter than that used by NESPAK. Secondly, every building because of its condition has a specific safety threshold. But NESPAK has treated all buildings the same as it has done no heritage building assessment, while the standard it has used for safe vibration threshold is much higher than used internationally for antiquities and fragile buildings.

Further, the geotechnical tests done by NESPAK did not evaluate the medium (grades and types of soil), which will carry the vibrations as these tests were done only for the OLMT track and not for the medium between the track and heritage site. Lastly, NESPAK never provided the actual vibration levels of construction equipment, which when calculated using the right distances clearly indicate levels far higher than safety thresholds.

The civil society lawyers supplemented their argument by proposing ‘tunnel boring’ technology near heritage sites. The same technology is being used in older parts of Delhi to safeguard heritage and surface construction and also conceived for the old city in the original Orange Metro design done by MVA Asia in 2007.

Thus, it can be safely assumed that the only case Punjab government has as its fait accompli — is that it has already done a lot of work, and any change in design would be wastage of public money. Will the Supreme Court accept this argument over serious threats to heritage, and in lieu of the character and soul of Lahore, is what awaits us.

The writer is a Lahore-based academic with research interests in radicalisation, development, and informal labour