A nine-storey commercial plaza-complete with three unauthorised basements-has sprung up in the heart of Shah Alam Chowk, openly flouting the very heritage-protection project that Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif launched to cleanse the Walled City of encroachments and restore its Mughal-era grandeur.
The Rs10 billion “Revival of Lahore” scheme, endorsed by former premier Nawaz Sharif and overseen by the Walled City of Lahore Authority (WCLA), envisages rehabilitating historic gates, creating pedestrian corridors and razing illegal structures that disfigure the skyline. Instead, WCLA’s own Building Control in-charge and Enforcement Inspector are accused of green-lighting plans that breach every major safeguard the agency was created to uphold.
Under the Walled City of Lahore Building Regulations 2014, the maximum permissible height inside the heritage zone is 50 ft (roughly four to five storeys), and “there will be a complete ban on basements” for plots of ten marlas or larger. Another draft clause (Reg. 11.6.1) flatly bars any basement excavation likely to endanger adjoining historic fabric.
Contrary to these limits, contractors hired by a developer have dug three full-depth basements beneath the nine-storey structure-an engineering practice planners warn could trigger subsidence in surrounding 19th-century buildings and compromise utilities packed into Shah Alam’s narrow lanes. Neighbouring shopkeepers fear a “mini-Margalla Tower-style collapse,” yet demolition crews have been kept at bay; sources allege that more than Rs50 million in bribes has changed hands to keep enforcement agencies silent.