Supreme Court (SC) on Tuesday expressed anger for not providing security to educational institutions when the court took the up case about possession of schools and colleges under the administrative control of Islamic Education Trust (IET).
A three-member bench of SC comprised of Justice Gulzar Ahmed, Justice Maqbool Baqir and Justice Muneeb Akhtar was hearing the case about Islamic Education Trust's schools and colleges at SC's Karachi Registry. Advocate General Sindh Zamir Ghumro and counsel of Trust Mureed Ali Shah appeared in the proceedings.
Court observed that government officials are only interested in demolishing the buildings of educational institutions to replace them with commercial constructions. When Sindh Government would be serious to protect the educational institutions, Justice Gulzar Ahmed remarked and added that for instance, see the conditions of Ayesha Bawani School. "It appears one day a commercial building would be built at the site of Ayesha Bawani school", court observed.
Justice Gulzar sought about the policy of Sindh Government about the educational institutions and stated that provincial government should show some seriousness, otherwise whole of the city would be turned into to shopping mall. Court also asked Advocate General Sindh to show some seriousness about the issue. Court also asked him to build a park at metropolitan hotel site, which has been demolished many years back, upon which he responded that metropolitan hotel site case is pre-judice.
Advocate General contended that Sindh Government is the owner of land of Islamic Trust's schools and colleges. However his stand was contested by counsel of Trust, who submitted that land belongs to Trust. Advocate General pleaded that the hearing of case should be adjourned for indefinite period until the ownership of land of trust's schools and colleges is decided by a session court, which has reserved its judgment into this case.
He told the court that there are three colleges and five schools are being run under Islamic Trust with more than 10000 students receiving education over there. Meanwhile, SC at Karachi Registry put off the hearing of application submitted by disqualified MNA of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) seeking court's permission to file the nomination papers for upcoming elections.
Court put off the hearing on technical ground after observing Sumera Malik's counsel Mobinuddin Qazi didn't appear in today's proceedings and asked counsel Azhar Bilal Sufi that he can't appear in this application, which has been submitted to review the decision of court for disqualifying Sumera Malik.