According to a study by Pakistan’s Auditor General, two real estate conglomerates, Bahria Town and Defence Housing Authority, have encroached on 785 kanals of public land along the Karachi-Hyderabad (M-9) highway.
While investigating the National Highway Authority’s (NHA) financial concerns, auditors discovered that Bahria Town Karachi (BTK) had encroached on 491-kanal NHA property and DHA City Karachi had taken 294-kanal NHA land.
M-9 is a six-lane, 136-kilometer-long route that connects Karachi with Hyderabad. The motorway, which was built between 2015 and 2018 by expanding the existing Superhighway, also serves commercial traffic from Karachi Port and Port Qasim.
According to the audit report, BTK exploited 491-kanal NHA property on M-9 for interchange construction “without any clearance from NHA officials and without entering into any agreement.”
It was also said that DHA City built an interchange and access road at NHA’s Property/Right of Way at M-9 Karachi by utilising about 3km of government land (on both sides of the M-9). The audit report said that “294-kanal (land) was unlawfully exploited by DHA without any sanction of NHA officials and without entering into lease arrangement with NHA.”
Auditors suggest an investigation to determine culpability and collect dues in accordance with NHA policy.
The auditors raised this issue in May-June 2021, according to the report, but the NHA did not respond. Despite numerous requests, the departmental audit committee did not meet to review this audit item, according to the report.
The auditors suggested an investigation to determine culpability for individuals found accountable, as well as the collection of dues in accordance with NHA policy. According to the report, a regulatory framework and standard operating procedures for the preservation and commercial use of the right of way should be used to implement NHA’s policies for commercialisation, right of way preservation, building line and encroachment removal, erection/establishment of filling stations, hotels, motels, restaurants, factories, nurseries, shops, khokhas, hoarding/billboards, etc, and laying of utility lines.
The commercial use of the right of way was morally or ethically incompatible with the people’s religious or regional sensibilities, it noted.
In February 2020, BTK will open its interchange on M9. The eight-kilometer-long project contains three underpasses, many slip roads, access roads, service roads, and a portion of a highway.
Three years ago, the Supreme Court approved BTK’s ‘Rs460bn offer’ for the Malir district property it had occupied and barred the accountability bureau from making referrals against it.
The Public Accounts Committee questioned NAB chairman earlier this year for doing the property mogul a ‘undue favour’ by enabling him to pay the ‘Rs460bn fine’ relating to the BTK housing project from the £140m revenues returned to Pakistan by the UK’s National Crime Agency.
In conjunction with the abovementioned investigation, the agency recently summoned former accountability adviser Mirza Shahzad Akbar and former members of the federal cabinet.
