Karachi admin seeks more time to demolish Nasla Tower

KARACHI: Karachi Commissioner Iqbal Memon Thursday requested the Supreme Court to grant his office another 50 days to execute the court order to demolish two multi-storey residential units -- Nasla Tower and Tejori Heights -- in the provincial capital that the top judicial forum insists were built on land acquired through illegal means.

Nasla Tower is a 15-storey residential building which the top court late last month directed to demolish within a week for encroaching on the land reserved for a service road.

Whereas Tejori Heights is an under-construction structure being built on a land purportedly owned by Pakistan Railways. It came on the radar of the Supreme Court last month when the Karachi registry of the forum directed Commissioner Iqbal Memon to bring it down “within a month”.

However, both the directives couldn’t be carried out.

Today, Memon informed the three-judge bench — headed by Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed and comprising Justice Ijaz ul-Ahsan and Justice Qazi Mohammad Amin Ahmed -- that its orders were being complied with and work to raze Nasla Tower was in progress.

He also updated the court on the demolition of the Tejori Heights, saying the work to raze the structure was also in progress.

'HALF OF KARACHI IS OCCUPIED'

During the hearing, Justice Ahmed also chastised Qazi Shahid Parvaiz, a senior member of the Board of Revenue (BoR), in a matter pertaining to the computerisation of land records, declaring half of Karachi city has been occupied by the landgrab mafia.

He also chided the official for presenting what he said was a defective and unsatisfactory report, telling him to "stop feeding us lies and stories".

"You are neither a Munshi [clerk], nor a Babu [officer]," said Justice Ahmed.

The court had in December last year directed the relevant authorities to end the illegal occupation of state property across Sindh.

It had also issued orders for the restoration of green belts, removal of encroachments from parks and playgrounds and ending the illegal occupation of land owned by the forest and irrigation departments across the province.

Over the course of proceedings, Parvaiz submitted several reports, sought by the court at various levels during the hearings, pertaining to the computerisation of land records.

Today, angered at the pictures attached in the report submitted by the BoR, Justice Ahmed said: "Give this lollipop to someone else, not us."

"If you do not follow the court's orders, you can be jailed for contempt of court," Chief Justice Gulzar warned.

Justice Aijaz ul Ahsan questioned the revenue board member about encroachments in Hyderabad, Sukkur, and Larkana.

NASLA TOWER CASE

In a previous judgement on the legality of the ownership of the land, the court had said: “It is claimed that around 1957, the main road that was proposed to be 280 feet wide was realigned and as a result, its width was reduced to 240 feet and the excess 40 feet was allotted to SMCHS through a letter by the chief commissioner in December 1957.”

It further noted the additional area was claimed to have been allotted by SMCHS to one Mustafai Begum and the area of the plot was allegedly increased from 780 square yards to 1,044 square yards and the additional area was neither incorporated in the original/amended lease nor in any subsequent lease deed.

The present owner ultimately acquired it by way of a conveyance deed executed in 2015 and initially, the plot in question was meant for residential purposes, but in 2004 the then city government through a resolution allowed conversion of all residential plots on Sharea Faisal for commercial use and in 2007 the plot was converted from residential to commercial use, it added.

The owners of the tower claimed that the additional area was allotted by SMCHS through a resolution in 2010 and the same came to be included in the total area of the plot while the mukhtiarkar in his report said that SMCHS had illegally increased the size of the plot by allotting the land reserved for the service road, the order said.