LAHORE – A full bench of the Supreme Court on Thursday directed the Punjab Housing secretary to crackdown on bogus housing societies which were looting people, as there was no mechanism to monitor such schemes.
The bench directed that Lahore Development Authority (LDA) must ensure, before sanctioning approval to any housing scheme, that its roads, passages, and thoroughfares gave access to public.
The court was hearing a human rights case moved by Azeemullah against Venice Society on the issue of incomplete infrastructure in the scheme over the last 20 years, whereof residents were facing multiple problems. The scheme was owned by former MPA Mian Shahbaz, who is now in police custody.
Headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and comprising of Justice Jawad S Khwaja and Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday, the bench noted that the public faced problems of commuting through the roads within a society, linked with LDA or Cantonment areas and after that the society developed roads and passages exclusively for its own use.
The court learnt from LDA that Rs 100 million were needed to complete the development in that scheme and the court directed it to spend proceeds of the plots in the said scheme on its completion. The bench also directed LDA to ensure that any scheme did not exploit other schemes and societies to raise the price of its own property.
Justice Ramday said to the LDA DG that LDA was approving schemes which even did not have their own land. CJ said they knew all what was happening under the cloak of such schemes and added that now law will rule and the courts knew how to set things in order.
