The Supreme Court (SC) has suspended the decision of the Lahore High Court (LHC) to scrap the Ravi Urban Development Project and has given conditional permission to the Punjab government to carry out development work.
A two-member bench of the apex court headed by Justice Ijaz-ul-Ahsan here on Monday, directed the Punjab government to limit development work to the land whose owners have been paid.
The court also directed that till the case is decided, the Punjab government cannot carry out any development work on the lands whose owners have not been paid.
It is pertinent to mention here that the LHC on January 25 had declared the basic provisions of the Ravi Urban Development Authority Act unconstitutional and also declared the process of acquiring land for the project illegal.
Prime Minister Imran Khan had announced that the government would approach the Supreme Court against this decision.
Justice Ijaz-ul-Ahsan remarked that during the hearing of the appeal, if such evidence came to light that an intra-court appeal should have been filed in this regard, the Supreme Court would remand the matter to the Lahore High Court.
However, Ravi Urban Development Authority (RUDA) Chief Executive Officer Imran Amin welcomed the decision of the SC and said that the dream of the RUDA project will soon be realized.
“The project will provide employment to millions of people while the new city buildings will be a masterpiece of architecture in the world. The RUDA Amendment Ordinance was revoked and quashed, but now recognizing its legitimacy following the Supreme Court’s decision, the court directed RUDA to continue working on 95 per cent of its acquired area,” he said.
The credible sources in RUDA also revealed that in fact a private housing society was behind this case as the said society was doing business by doing illegal development in some areas of the project.
However, RUDA CEO also confirmed this and informed Profit that a private housing society ‘Rehman Garden’ was also pursuing the case.
“The said society was illegal and we have served them notices,” he confirmed.
