Orders the Monal restaurant in Islamabad to be un-sealed. The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the de-sealing of Islamabad’s Monal Restaurant, which is located in the beautiful Margalla Hills. The Islamabad High Court had ordered that the restaurant be sealed and that it be taken over.
Justice Ijazul Ahsan led a three-person bench that made the ruling at the top of the court.
People in the capital city have been told to close down the Monal restaurant and take over the Margalla Greens golf club, which was built on land that wasn’t theirs. It also found that the military’s claim to 8,000 acres of Margalla Hills National Park was illegal.
Read more with EL news : The Supreme Court maintains the status quo at the Monal Restaurant
Companies in the Monal Group of Companies then went to the Supreme Court and asked it to overturn the IHC decision.
Is there any proof that the IHC has signed an order to close down the restaurant?
In response, the lawyer for the restaurant, Makhdom Ali Khan, said that he had a certified copy of the IHC’s brief order with him at all times.
This is what the man said: An intra-court appeal had been set up, but the case was thrown out before it could even start.
The top court wondered how the restaurant could be closed before the written orders from the court came out. This is how it works: A judge said: “The Islamabad Wild Life Management Board (IWMB), which shut down the restaurant, was not even a party to the case.”
“Principally, there is no order from the IHC that can be used to close the restaurant,” Justice Mazahir Naqvi, another judge on the bench, said. Verbal orders have no legal or constitutional weight.
Justice Ahsan said that other restaurants may have been served a notice before they were closed down. This is what he said. The Monal Restaurant, on the other hand, was not like this.
How many restaurants have been closed by the IWMB board? The judge asked the lawyer for the IWMB about that number.
In the first few days, the lawyer said, “Gloria Jeans Cafe and La Montana have been given notice.”
Monal Restaurant took Justice Naqvi’s dislike to heart. “Is it a monarchy that the Emperor made the decree, and it was put into effect before he even signed it?,” he asked.
The court then told the authorities to open the restaurant.
In its petition to the Supreme Court, the restaurant said that when the high court used its own powers, it ordered the chairman of the Capital Development Authority and the head of the IWMB to take over the restaurant and seal the premises, even though none of the parties had asked for this. This violated the petitioner’s basic rights, the court said.
The petition said that the Monal Group of Companies had 650 employees, and that because of the high court order, the employees and their families were hurting.
On November 9, the IHC said that a lot of people were too lenient about the destruction of the Margalla Hills National Park and the wildlife sanctuary, and they should have done more to stop it. The court also asked for a survey to be done of the damage and a report to be written up.
In the same month, the court asked Pakistan’s attorney general to tell them if Messers Remount, the veterinary and farms directorate of the General Headquarters, could legally own or manage state land in the protected area of the national park. They wanted to know if they could do that.
When Monal Group of Companies said that before its lease with the Capital Development Authority expired on Aug 31, 2021, the company had signed a new deal with Remount. This raised the question.
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