A week after the federal government requested the apex court seeking deposits made by Bahria Town Limited for settlement of cases regarding its projects in Karachi, the government of Sindh has put forth a similar request in the Supreme Court.
Last week, the federal government had submitted a request seeking the funds pertaining to the Rs460 billion payment by Bahria Town as settlement for cases against the real estate company.
According to a report in Dawn, on Wednesday, the Sindh government made a similar request. An application filed at the Supreme Court’s Karachi registry by Advocate General for Sindh, Salman Talibuddin, maintained that in an order given in March, the apex court had directed Bahria Town to make a down payment to the Sindh government regarding the rights to be acquired by the provincial government for land measuring 16,896 acres in Karachi.
The application also said that due to the fiscal crunch affecting the federal government, Sindh had only received Rs439 billion of its budget estimate of Rs605.6 billion. Moreover, the province had just received Rs9.9 billion out of the Rs14.266 billion allocated under the Public Sector Development Programme 2018-2019. Due to this monetary shortfall, development projects in the province were facing issues.
The Sindh advocate general has requested that the amount deposited by the Bahria Town in the account of the apex court should be transferred to Sindh government considering these issues. He also assured the Supreme Court that the amount would be used in development projects in a transparent manner.