Daily Times

SHIKARPUR: The Municipal Committee Shikarpur is likely to boot out an influential person from the protected heritage site of Shahi Bagh, Daily Time learnt on Tuesday.

Shahi Bagh or the Great Garden is a beautiful garden in Shikarpur city, built during the British rule. Once the garden was famous for its beauty and citizens used to visit it every evening.

Shikarpur, also known as Paris of Sindh, is a historical city with several protected heritage sites.

After passage of around four years, the precious land of Shahi Bagh would be vacated by an influential person of the area.

Four years ago, the Shikarpur town nazim allotted a portion of this heritage site to an influential person namely Suleman Shaikh on a 99-year lease for cultivation. Later, Shaikh wanted to sell the land.

Hadi Bakhsh Zardari, the then Shikarpur deputy commissioner who was also administrator of the Shikarpur Municipal Committee, took notice of the attempt and wrote letters to higher authorities to cancel the lease.

Shaikh filed a constitutional petition in the Sindh High Court’s Larkana Registry, in which he stated that the district administration wanted to get the land vacated, which he took for 99 years from the Municipal Committee. The court issued a stay order and summoned the Shikarpur deputy commissioner and other authorities concerned. Now, Shaikh has withdrawn the petition and the municipal committee can retrieve the land any time.

Talking to Daily Times, Babar, aka Sunni Sanjrani, the MC Shikarpur chairman, said that former tehsil nazim Zafar Shaikh had given the lease of Shahi Bagh’s land illegally to his relative, which was a condemnable act.

“After a strong case placed by the municipal committee, the applicant withdrew his petition. The property will now be used to facilitate the public of Shikarpur,” he said. To a question about other municipal properties, he said that they would be retrieved from influential persons of Shikarpur.