IHC permits CDA to resume building the Bhara Kahu Bypass Project

On Monday, December 12, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) said that the Capital Development Authority (CDA) could resume building the Bhara Kahu bypass project on land owned by Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU).

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In a short order, an IHC judge threw out several petitions against the scheme that had been filed by faculty members and the administration. The project was legal, the court said, because the necessary land use approvals had been given by the right authorities. The CDA council told the court that the authority had already gotten an Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) of the project from the Pakistan Environment Protection Agency (EPA), which said the project was safe for the environment. The CDA council said that the project had already been approved and would be done next year as planned.

The court was told that the 5-kilometer project was part of the CDA master plan to ease traffic in the area, which was making the environment worse because of all the traffic jams. According to the CDA’s Project Concept-1 (PC-1), the 5-kilometer-long road, which would include a 1-kilometer-long flyover, would start on Murree Road near the QAU stop and end on Murree Road near the Jugi bus stop. The project would be done in three months by the National Logistics Cell (NLC).