On November 29, the Sindh Building Control Authority asked people to apply for amnesty if they were the owners of such buildings in Karachi, Sukkur and other cities. They are believed to be numbered in the thousands. The advertisement appeared in daily Urdu newspapers.
The idea was the brainchild of Sindh Minister for Local Bodies Agha Siraj Durrani. There is a section in the SBCA laws that allows him to make changes in the Buildings and Town Planning Regulations 2002, to convert illegal buildings into legal ones.
But now the authority’s decision to offer amnesty has been challenged in court by a man named Rana Faizul Hasan, who is the secretary of an NGO called the United Human Rights Commission Pakistan (not to be confused with the HRCP). It will be heard by the Sindh High Court on December 13.
Hasan argues that the SBCA has always had unfettered powers to deal with people who violate building rules. But it was because it did not take any action that these thousands of buildings in Karachi alone came into existence.
This new amnesty scheme would add to the already rampant corruption in the former Karachi Building Control Authority, which has spread to the entire of Sindh with the creation of the Sindh Building Control Authority.
The amnesty scheme is just a way to cover up the failure of officers to do their duty, the petitioner has argued. He has asked the court to declare this scheme as well as any other method or move to give legal cover to illegally constructed structures as void, ab-initio for being in violation of Articles 116 and 128 of the Constitution. He also requested the court to restrain the SBCA from regularising the illegally constructed buildings till a decision is made in court.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 9th, 2011.
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