KARACHI - A Supreme Court (SC) mandated judicial commission on water and sanitation in Sindh on Monday sought justification from Sindh government over allotting industrial land for commercial purpose.

The one-man judicial commission headed by Justice (e) Amir Hani Muslim its deliberations observed that raising commercial plazas on industrial plots is prima facie, against the terms and defeats the very purpose of creating industrial zones.

Counseling on behalf of the Sindh government, Additional Advocate Shabbir Shah requested the commission to grant more time to submit comments regarding government’s stance on use of industrial plots for commercial purposes. Secretary Industries Sindh stated that SITE is regulated by a board through managing directors, who is the nominee of government. AAG Shabir Shah submitted that one percent to the entire area has to be allotted for commercial purposes under Building and Town Planning Regulation 2002.

According to him, this ratio would be applicable to the SITE throughout Sindh, he, however, did not have the date of the plots which the SITE has allotted for commercial purposes in terms of ratio.

Commission made it clear that object of raising this issue is not that the given ratio of commercial plots is enormous, but the object is that once the SITE has allotted industrial plots to any person and on his failure to run the other commercial activity.

Prima facie, this is not permissible for multifarious reason as commercial permission by the SITE has burdened the civic agencies with water, sewerage and municipal disposals, for which there is no satisfactory mechanism within different SITEs which the commission has visited so far, Justice Hani stated.

The commission head also declared that the spirit of the commercial activity is being misinterpreted and ruled that any commercial activity, if at all, should have been limited to that particular industry only in the shape of a fair-price shop.