KARACHI, 8 November 2003 — The Supreme Court confirmed the stay given by it last month against any construction at the site reserved for an airport at Gwadar and specifically barred a private builder from raising any structure there.
The bench, headed by Chief Justice Sheikh Riaz Ahmed, also instructed that the appeals from Civil Aviation Authority and Balochistan government against the decision of the high court on compensation should be clubbed together and put before the court before the start of winter vacation in December.
The confirmation of the month-old temporary stay came after Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim, representing the Civil Aviation Authority, and Riaz Ahmed, appearing for the CAA and Balochistan government complained that one of the respondents, Mir Kalamati, was in the process of erecting a building on the proposed site.
Besides the chief justice, the bench had Justice Qazi Muhammad Farooq and Justice Abdul Hamid Dogar as members.
Fakhruddin and Riaz Ahmed were pressing for rejection of the judgment of Balochistan High Court which had accepted the determination of 6.9 million rupees by the lower courts as the amount of compensation payable to Mir Abdul Ghafoor and other claimants.
Giving the background of the case, advocate Riaz Ahmed said that the area had a helipad, probably built by the British-Indian government during World War II. It had been built with the consent of the sultan of Muscat who ruled over the port as an offshore territory of his sultanate.
The area was transferred to Pakistan in 1956 against compensation of 90 million rupees and years later the Civil Aviation Authority there expanded the helipad into an airport capable of handling Fokker Friendship flights.
It was opened to Gulf Air and PIA and later to Oman Air to operate weekly flights for expatriate Pakistanis working in Muscat- Oman and also the few Arab families who had decided to continue living under Pakistani rule.
When a master plan for the development of the city was drawn up to have a modern airport connected with a road network, an international airport capable of handling larger aircraft was also designed. An area of 694 acres was earmarked for the project.
