Peshawar - A two-member bench of the Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Wednesday restrained Chief Executive Cantonment Board Peshawar (CBP) from construction of a commercial plaza before Postgraduate Medical Institute Lady Reading Hospital’s (LRH) emergency building and directed to submit written comments within fortnight. 

Earlier a writ petition was filed in the Peshawar High Court by Changaiz Khan Advocate, Arsalan Sareer Advocate and Waqar Aziz Advocate, stating that LRH was a historic and big hospital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The applicants said that hospital had three gates and gate No.1 of the hospital was used for emergency and any hurdle due to traffic jam could cause serious problems for the patients.  

They added that some time back the CBP officials, with the help of hospital officials, demolished the office of Edhi ambulance service, one of the reputed public welfare organisations, beside emergency gate and excavated the same area for construction of commercial plaza. The petitioner requested the court to declare the construction of commercial plaza as illegal, unlawful and against the fundamental rights of general public.     

During arguments Advocate Muhammad Taif and Advocate Tariq Kamal said that the act of construction of plaza was against the rules of public policy and CBP was also negating its own building laws as no car parking and drainage system had been provided in the proposed building. 

The divisional bench of PHC, comprising Justice Arshid Ali and Justice Naeem Anwer after completion of arguments, issued direction to Cantonment Executive Officer, Chief Officer Town-I and Director Postgraduate Medical Institute (PGMI) Lady Reading Hospital to submit written para-wise comments within fortnight and in the meanwhile directed Chief Executive Cantonment Board Peshawar not to raise any construction on the disputed area till disposal of the writ petition.