Kidney Hill – Rumors of Progress

The grapevine of Karachi claims that a resolution has been reached as regards to the issue of Kidney Hill, which has been a burning issue for the past month which lead to a post a few days back titled Kidney Hill & the Ongoing Saga & later Kidney Hill, a Pictorial.

In the few days following the Cowasjee’s article a high level meeting took place at the Governor House and people walked out having said it was a successful meeting, though utterly complicated. We all know that a year back the Governor and The President of Pakistan had promised the residents of Overseas Cooperative Housing Society some 20 acres of land to be distributed to its residents in the peripheral locations of Kidney Hill, some 10 acres were allocated for roads while the rest were to be preserved for utility services and would be fully developed.

The dispute we have been following is NOT the entire 62 acres of land at Kidney Hill, but actually only the 20 acres which were being allocated to the members of OCHS. What actually happened, in typical Pakistani style, was that a few gentlemen belonging to the greedy developer mafia obtained membership of OCHS, in hope of getting a few pieces of land within the said territory, they were successfully able to push their own applications up to the top of the food chain, using any and all types of lubricating paraphernalia. Once satisfied with their homework at the local society level they turned up the pressure on the bureaucracy to cough out the allotments of these plots for development.

A number of OCHS residents spotting this apparent problem felt rightfully irritated and approached the court for a stay order. Fearing the worse, the gentlemen, recruited two hoodlums for a rumored sum of 2 crores from Lahore and were entrusted to take care of all hurdles that stood in their way to fame and fortune, the hoodlums wasted no time in harassing the 12 OCHS appellants which forced their quick withdrawal and then later the hoodlums worked on the Shehri group threatening dire consequences.

The bureaucracy was stuck in a dilemma as they did not want to reverse their decision to allot this area to OCHS but were also concerned about the irregularities taking place, I have been told for a fact that MQM was not involved in this fiasco as the Governor was genuinely working hard not solve this issue.

What has finally happened is that the two new OCHS members have been identified and their hoodlums have been arrested and placed behind bars, the Government is carefully reviewing the entire project but has not made a decision, it is quite possible that the order issued a year back may be reversed, but nothing is certain.

_DISCLAIMER: Please remember this is reported as per the grapevine of Karachi, though I report it after thoroughly clarifying the chain of events and occurrences but may be drastically wrong, it might be possible that some solid news might resurface within the week, if it has not done so already. If I am incorrect at any specific point, I am fully prepared to append the post to correct the anomaly. It must also be noted that I have not used any names to identify the people involved in this chain of events so as to avoid any embarrassments if any news report is deemed incorrect