LAHORE: Civil society, legal experts and other stakeholders have expressed grave concern over what they say immunity given to the Ravi Urban Development Authority (RUDA) and barring jurisdiction of courts.

They call the RUDA Act-2020 contradictory to the fundamental rights of the citizens as narrated in the Constitution of Pakistan. They have also urged the government to immediately amend certain clauses that empower the authority to an extreme level, thus weakening the rights of the people in the area.

“I am really shocked to learn about such extreme powers given to the the authority assigned to execute such a huge project in Lahore along the Ravi river. It is a blatant violation of our constitution that guarantees several rights to the citizens,” Lahore Conservation Society Secretary (information) Dr Ajaz Anwar deplored while speaking to Dawn on Saturday.

According to RUDA Act-2020, section 48 empowers the Ravi Riverfront Urban Development Authority (RUDA), its chairman, executives and all others to take any decision that cannot be challenged in any court of law. Similarly, section 49 bars jurisdiction of the courts on hearing the issues related to RUDA.

“No suit, prosecution or any other legal proceedings shall lie against the Authority, the Chairman, the Director General, any member, officer, servant, expert or consultant of the Authority, in respect of anything done or intended to be done in good faith under this Act,” reads section 48 titled “Immunity of the Authority and its employees” of the act.

Similarly, the section 49 titled “Jurisdiction of courts barred” states: “Save as otherwise provided by this Act, no court or other authority shall have jurisdiction to question the legality of anything done or any action taken in good faith under this Act, by or at the instance of the Authority.”

Mr Anwar said the aforementioned clauses of the act clearly reflected something mala fide on the part of the government. “Introducing such clauses in the laws mean that you are set to do something that is against rights of the people,” he said.

He said courts should take notice of such laws that are contradictory to the constitution.

Ms Fauzia Qureshi, a civil society activist, also expressed wonder over sections 48 and 49 of the act and said: “I am wondering which other act has such clauses. Most of our legislations give power to their advisory bodies or boards which are handpicked by the chairman and therefore go ahead and pass any decisions.”

She said minutes of meetings of the boards of the public sector organisations are never made public and any dissenting observations are as it is not recorded. “This is a standard operating procedure to make all minutes of meetings public,” she added.

According to Mian Mustafa Rasheed, Pakistan Muslim League (Functional) provincial general secretary, who also heads the Ravi Urban Development Victims Committee, the unlimited powers of RUDA had been exposed.

“The rulers have defeated dictators in removing the powers of all the courts in matters of authority. I think that no dictator has given unlimited powers to such institutions as done by the present government,” he deplored. Eminent lawyer and environmental activist Rafay Alam said courts normally don’t bother about such sections / clauses that are in conflict with the constitution. “There are various flawed laws about which courts don’t bother,” he added.

Mr Alam believed that the objective of making such authorities was to accomplish projects and jobs without interruption.

Advocate Humayun Faiz said such provisions were a source of creating doubts in our minds on transparency and intentions of the executives.

“Law does not permit to indemnify some particulars projects. For instance, if courts finds some anomalies and mala fide on the part of RUDA officials, what would be the remedy against those malpractices. Moreover, jurisdiction of courts cannot be curtailed in such an arbitrary manner. Question of legality is inevitable as right to life and right to own private property are involved in this project.” Ravi project’s spokesman S.M. Imran defended the RUDA act, stating that nothing new was introduced in it.

“Section 42 and 43 of the LDA Act-1975 and some other sections have similar wordings / terms. Similarly, the section 40, 41, 42 and others of the Punjab Cities Development Act-1976 also have the same content as narrated in the Ruda Act. Likewise, section 36 of NAB ordinance too has same thing,” he argued. He said the words “in good faith” as mentioned in the section 48 of Ruda Act-2020 matter.

Published in Dawn, December 7th, 2020