I think the legal drama surrounding BAHRIA Town Karachi has come to an end. Concerns over the extent to which the project’s developer had cooperated with the court’s directions have arisen since the Supreme Court recently began to apply its decision from March 2019 against the project. Bahria Town’s interactions with the Supreme Court had been mostly hidden from the public since the initial ruling; in fact, all information was fiercely guarded by the state and the court. Bahria Town wasn’t aware that it was so far behind on its payments that it may be considered in default under the provisions of the original agreement until the current hearings raised questions about the Supreme Court’s bank account. It appears that Bahria Town never meant to fulfil its half of the bargain. The developer of real estate acknowledges that the Supreme Court’s accounts contain only Rs65 billion in total deposits. This also seems to include an amount of Rs35 billion, which the PTI administration controversially deposited in the Supreme Court’s account on behalf of Bahria Town, instead of the money that was intended to be returned to the Pakistani people by the UK authorities. However, Bahria Town was required by the provisions of the agreement to pay an equal installment of Rs2.25 billion every month for the following three years, after making an initial deposit of Rs25 billion by August 2019. By the end of September 2022, it should have deposited at least Rs133 billion into the Supreme Court’s account, according to this computation. Even though the Sindh authorities claim that it has in reality encroached over more than 3,000 acres of surplus land, the company has paid less than half of what is due and is now claiming that its obligations were incorrectly calculated and that it occupies less property than is considered to be in its control.
It is astonishing that there is still uncertainty over the developer’s future in light of Bahria Town’s obvious wrongdoings and the Supreme Court’s open observations about them. The funds that were deposited with the Supreme Court are now being released. However, even though the federal government is legally entitled to the funds from the UK, transferring any funds to the Sindh authorities could raise legitimate concerns, particularly since the court maintains that senior provincial officials colluded with the developer during this massive scandal. This would be similar to how the UK monies were embezzled to support Bahria Town, in a sense. Rather, such monies would be far better used to compensate those who Bahria Town and its facilitators forced to give up their ancestral lands. Regarding Bahria Town’s penalty and its effects on the real estate industry.
