Plans for the Park

The Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) land director, its anti-encroachment director and eight other officers were suspended in end October 2015 for failing to comply with the Sindh High Court’s earlier order to clear the encroachments on Jahangir Park and restore it to its original condition. According to a report in The News International of October 31, nine families were living unlawfully in the Park, vendors had encroached on the property and a mosque had been built illegally on some part of the land. The Rah-e-Raast Trust, a nongovernmental organization, had first sought to clear the encroachments in 2012, as per a report in The Express Tribune of November 3.

When endeavoring to ascertain the current status of Jahangir Park a Dawn reporter realized "no one really wants to take responsibility for it. The KMC says that it doesn’t come under their jurisdiction and... the District Municipal South say they know nothing about anything going on there at the moment.”
The Park was initially called Byram Bagh before its name was changed to Jahangir Park. The Park with a fountain in the middle had been donated to the city by noted philanthropist Byramji Jahangir Rajkotwalla on Navroz in 1893. A pavilion was added in the 1920s when the Park served as a picnic spot and had nine wells in its neighborhood which provided potable water. It was the favorite venue for cricket tournaments. "We played Rubie Shield Cricket here up to and after 1947,” recalled businessman Cyrus Cowasjee of Karachi.
"Old tour guides used to mark the place as a ‘must go’... With increased political activity in the 1930s and 40s, it became a hub for political activities,” states the blog The Karachi Walla, adding, "You will still find children playing cricket around, amidst debris and trash. You can’t avoid seeing people taking drugs… The fountain is gone. People urinate in the pond now. The vendors stationed around the Park have found it an easy dumping ground.” At one time there were plans to convert the Park into a car parking plaza but the Supreme Court deemed it an improper use of public property.