ISLAMABAD: A local court has been moved against the alleged encroachment on a public park in E-11where some people have started construction ofa high-rise building.

A resident moved the local court seeking restoration of the amenity land.

According to the petitioner, the land was initially grabbed by some people who later dismantled swings and erected a boundary wall around it. Later, they brought heavy machinery to the site and started constructing a building.

However, the local residents resisted the move and due to alaw and order situation, police and officials from Capital Development Authority (CDA) reached the area and temporarily stopped the construction work.

According to the petition, the alleged land grabbers have now started harassing the residents.

As per detail, the park was situatedin aprivate housingsociety in E-11. An affectee of this area, Mohammad Aslam Khan, approached the IHC in 2016 seeking compensation for his land that was acquired for the development of the sector. The court directed the CDA and the society to provide the compensation to the affected owner.

However, instead of a residential plot, the society allotted himthe land of the public park in connivance with the CDA, the counselforthe petitionersaid.

The allotment was in sharp violation of the judgement issued by the IHC last year that restrained the civic agency from converting greenbelts into residential and commercial plots.

IHC Justice Sardar Ejaz Ishaq Khan while deciding the petitions of some residents G-11 had ruled that the CDA`s regulations were illegal and ordered the demolition of houses built on suchplots since 2021.

The court issued the ruling on a petition that contended thatin 2021 the CDA officials had showed up in the neighbourhood and informed them that new plots would be carved out in anopen space adjacent to a nullah at the end of their street. They claimed that the creation of such plots was tantamount to `chinacutting`.

The petitioners had challenged this on the grounds that the layout plan of their area had already attained finality in the 1990s.

The court held that if the CDA was allowed to carve out plots in developed areas, `there would remain no certainty for any owner of a plot in Islamabad with abutting land to know for certain what new monstrosity may stand erected in front of his house after he has expended his time, money and energy in building a house with the layout then existent and on the basis of which he decided to purchase that specific plot`.

The judgement noted that `instead of developing huge areas of land available for new sectors, the CDA is going around scraping the bottom of the barrel and scrounging for tiny spaces to create new plots in already developed sectors.

Even though such carving out of plots did not change the residential character of the area, it did change the `character of the residence` of the petitioners, which could not be done after a layout plan was approved.

The court ordered a house under-construction on the site to be razed and the debris to be cleared from the open space within 30 days of the judgement.