Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The city managers are pursuing a discriminatory policy while taking action against violations of by-laws by multi storey buildings in the federal capital as in recent days, the Building Control Section (BCS) sealed the Safa Gold Mall and Grand Hayat Hotel.

The lease agreement of the latter was also cancelled by the CDA board, but violations of a similar nature have been overlooked by the Authority in the case of Centaurus Mall.

To show its writ and to enforce building by-laws, the Capital Development Authority (CDA) was looking fully active in recent months by taking strict actions against property giants and sealed the two biggest towers; Safa Gold Mall and Grand Hayat Hotel over the violations of the Islamabad Residential Sector Zoning (Building Control) Regulations.

Although, the prevailing activism and hardcore policy against the violators of civic laws is laudable, but the concerned circles considered the whole move as a discriminatory action and demanded to extend the same policy on others as well, especially Centaurus Mall, which is in the row of the aforementioned buildings which are violating the rules and regulations.

Centaurus Mall is one of its kind in Pakistan. The mall is home of four towers; two apartment tower blocks, one office tower block and a hotel tower block with a maximum of 42 storeys.

The project was built by the Pak Gulf Construction Private Limited and owned by Sardar Tanveer Ilyas Khan. Three towers having 28 storeys each including three basements are fully functional; whereas, the 42-storey hotel block is yet to be constructed.

Centaurus Mall is accused of committing bigger violations than Safa Gold Mall as the latter only constructed security offices in basement reserved for parking; whereas, the major portion of a basement of Centaurus Mall is being used for commercial purposes.

The owner rented out the parking space to Al-Fatah Department Store, which is a clear violations of its approved building plan.

Furthermore, the by-laws for the Centaurus’ plot mentions a complete parking solution as a basic requirement, but besides using the parking space for commercial activity, the mall management has also been using the biggest piece of CDA’s land adjacent to Centaurus illegally and encroached upon it by constructing a boundary wall and offices for the security staff.

The Authority took the action against Safa Gold Mall over placing a dancing fountain in the “Right- of-way” and forced them to demolish it, but failed to take a single enforcement operation on ground, where Centaurus Mall encroached upon a 27 feet by 1250 feet wide strip of land of “Right-of-way” of the southern service road of Sector F-8 and 73 feet by 1250 feet wide strip of “Right-of- way” of Jinnah Avenue, which is a totally illegal act.

In the case of Centaurus, the civic authority, instead of taking practical steps is only content to issuing show cause notices as it first issued a notice to the owner of Centaurus Mall in 2014 and asked him to vacate the CDA land.

A well placed source inside the Authority has commented that the owner of Centaurus Mall was beyond the limits of the CDA as he had a direct influence on the prime minister and also at the cabinet level.

He briefed further that when the CDA issued notices to Centaurus Mall for vacating the encroached land then a legal notice was received the authority through the office of Senator Babar Awan containing threatening language.

The legal notice warned the Authority that the mall was a core target of terrorists and if the Authority took any action to vacate its land then it would create a risk to the life and property of the people living or visiting the mall. The notice threatened that the CDA would be responsible of any untoward incident if it tries to vacate the land.

It is the duty of the higher ups to ensure merit and transparency and implement the same policy for everyone and such actions should be across the board rather than of a selective nature.