KARACHI: The owner of Nasla Tower has filed a review application before the Supreme Court against its orders for demolition of the entire building and pleaded the property to be regularized in the interest of third party owners.
The Supreme Court on June 16 had ordered the commissioner Karachi to remove all residents of the Nasla Tower situated in the Sindhi Muslim Cooperative Housing Society after taking possession of the building constructed on 341 square yards encroached land and complete its demolition as expeditiously as possible. The court had observed that there was no denial of the fact that on account of unilateral increase in the area not supported by any legally acceptable instrument, a service road has been encroached upon and the tower exists on area in excess of what was originally leased. The court observed that being an illegal construction, there was no provision for compounding such illegality, especially where a service road was blocked and the tower was liable to be demolished.
Filing the review applications before the court, the owner and those allotted apartments and shops in the Nasala Tower submitted that the owners were not encroachers of state land, but were occupying it with the consent of Sindhi Muslim Cooperating Housing Society, the allottee of the land from chief commissioner having paid full market value to the commissioner and the owners predecessors. They submitted that the order of the court directing demolition of the entire building without giving an opportunity to show by expert evidence that the construction raised on the remaining 780 square yards could be salvaged despite demolishing the part of construction raised on the excess 341 square yards, was unjust and contrary to the precedent cases decided by the SC.
The petitioner’s counsel submitted that the SC in its Bahria Town case allowed regularization of land even though there were glaring illegalities in the acquisition of the land. The court, he argued, allowed concession to the builder keeping in view third party interest of those allotted the property. He submitted that in the instant case, the third parties will be seriously be prejudiced. He submitted that the road was admittedly realigned and the excess land was given to the SMCHS, which will never be used for road.
He submitted that the Supreme Court’s judgments were equally applicable to the instant case and, therefore, the petitioner’s property may also be regularised in view of the SC judgment. They requested the court to review the impugned order of demolition of the building and allow the application directing the SMCHS and KMC to submit their layout plans of the entire area.
