The Supreme Court has told forty three innocent buyers of apartments in the soon-to-be-demolished Nasla Towers to get back the amounts they paid from the builder. The question arises: is the builder alone responsible for constructing the building on a fservice road? Why not punish those who allowed the construction to happen in the first place and did nothing to stop it?
The Sindh Government deliberately re-named the Karachi Building Control Authority as Sindh Building Control Authority so that it could appoint its favorites from the interior of the country. Out of 25 directors, twenty two are from places other than Karachi, even though ninety percent of new construction takes place in Karachi. That's why so many buildings have been constructed on amenity parks and illegally acquired government land, not to mention Bahria Town for which thousands of villagers were evicted from their villages and four hundred were killed.
So the apex court should really have recovered the amount from the Sindh Government employees who facilitated the crime.
The double standard is also evident. Imran Khan's residence and other properties in Islamabad were "regularized" after payment of paltry amounts while such properties in Karachi face demolition.
But the question remains: Nasla Tower flats are probably worth four times as much as the buyers paid for them years ago. How will the builder (Altaf Pardesi) pay them the huge amount (probably forty million for each flat)? The poor owners will have to pay at least that much to buy similar flats elsewhere in the city. Besides this, there are many such buildings that have been built on illegally acquired land. The court will have no option but to demolish those as well. Why not do what they've done in Islamabad: regularize all such buildings after payment of similar amounts?
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