Red lights to green number plates: LHC puts a brake on forklifts
By Our Staff Reporter
LAHORE, May 23: The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Wednesday annulled contracts awarded by the City District Government Lahore (CDGL) for lifting vehicles from roads besides giving a 39-day deadline to the Punjab government to stop using green number plates for vehicles.
Chief Justice Iftikhar Husain Chaudhry ruled the power to remove a vehicle under the law vested only with traffic police and the traffic police after the implementation of comprehensive plan may enter into a fresh contract with private forklift operators. The court said there was no legal provision to use green number plates for official vehicles.
The court asked the government to make laws for green plates otherwise those would be banned from July 1.
The court also annulled the notification of the Punjab government issued on March 6, 2007, which allowed the display of green number plates for government-owned vehicles.
The court ruled the Punjab government had granted the permission without amending the Motor Vehicle Ordinance, 1965, and its rules.
The court said the use of green number plates was being misused, directing the Home Department to amend the law if the government thought that green numbers were indispensable.
The court said hat under the Local Government Ordinance the city district government was empowered to declare certain areas as parking lots and others as no-parking areas, but as for as the control and management of traffic was concerned that remained exclusively the function of traffic police.
Only traffic police could remove a vehicle, which blocked the traffic or caused hindrance in the smooth flow of traffic. The justice said the police also could remove a vehicle parked outside the declared no-parking area.
The traffic police deputy inspector general (DIG) had presented a parking plan for five big cities of the Punjab, Lahore Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Multan and Gujranwala, the court said, adding the court found the plan reasonable. The court directed the DIG to implement it in its letter and spirit.
Under the plan committees have been formed to conduct studies and point out parking and no-parking areas and devise methods to remove wrongly parked vehicles.
The DIG said the provincial government had provided 30 forklifts to the city traffic police that would be available by the next month.
SIREN LIGHTS: The court also banned the use of blue siren lights on private vehicles ordering that it should be allowed to police agencies and official security agencies only.
The use of these lights by public functionaries or individual should be stopped from July 1, the court added.
The Punjab traffic DIG should issue directions to traffic police for not permitting the use of the lights on vehicles other than that of the Punjab government, police and security agencies of federal government.
The directions have been given in a judgment on a petition filed by advocate MD Tahir.