PESHAWAR: A Peshawar High Court bench on Thursday sought comments from the provincial government and other respondents about a petition challenging the Peshawar Bus Rapid Transit project.

Chief Justice Yahya Afridi and Justice Ijaz Anwar Khan directed additional advocate general Waqar Ahmad Khan to accept notice on behalf of the government and file comments about the petition for the respondents, including the government through transport and mass transit secretary and BRT project director.

The bench was hearing a petition jointly filed by former provincial minister Maulana Amanullah Haqqani and Peshawar resident Wali Khan, who claimed that the bus service initiative was illegal as the procedural formalities provided in the Constitution and other laws were not fulfilled for its execution.

It fixed Nov 2 for the next hearing into the petition and directed the petitioners’ lawyer, Mohammad Isa Khan, to assist it about the maintainability of the petition and about what provisions of law has been violated by the respondents in entering the BRT project.

Petitioners’ lawyer insists several laws, rules not followed for execution of the initiative

Mr Isa Khan said while the KP chief minister had claimed that the project would be completed in six months, the agreement signed between the government and Asian Development Bank showed the expected completion of the project by June 30, 2021.

He said the government had kept the people in the dark about the project and hadn’t made the relevant documents public.

The lawyer said his clients had requested the government to provide them with those documents under the Right to Information Act but action on the request hadn’t been initiated to date.

He said the BRT project would cost Rs57 billion, which was a loan obtained from the ADB and to be disbursed in three years.

When the bench asked about the laws violated by the government during the BRT project’s execution, Mr Isa Khan said several laws and rules were not followed in that respect.

He added that even the Environmental Protection Act was violated by the government as it didn’t submit the required information to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The lawyer claimed that feasibility report wasn’t prepared for the project though it was the very basis of any developmental project.

He also said the pre-feasibility public sharing report on the project was lacking.

The lawyer said the project’s ‘draft design’ had never been prepared though it was the very basis of a final design and that the final design had been made in its absence.

AAG Waqar Ahmad said the petition was not maintainable and that the government had fulfilled all legal requirements before launching the project.

The respondents in the petition are the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government through transport and mass transit secretary; project director for the BRT Project Management Unit; Provincial Development Working Party through its chairman; Central Development Working Party through planning secretary, and the Executive Committee of National Economic Council through the principal secretary to the prime minister.

The petitioners requested the court to declare the BRT project illegal, without lawful authority and of no legal effect.

They prayed the court to direct the respondents, including the provincial government, to disclose all documentary information to the court and petitioner about the project, including the loan agreement signed by the government with the ADB.

The petitioners said the government, which was left with few months to complete five-year term, shouldn’t be allowed both legally and logically to execute a mega project, which would become a liability for the next government.

They said the BRT project had a number of legal and technical flaws due to which the project was bound to fail and thus, unnecessarily burdening the people of the province with loans.

The petitioners said legally and technically speaking, there should have been a technical audit of the project but ironically, the government didn’t do so.

Published in Dawn, October 27th, 2017