Last week, television channels showed pitiful scenes of people evicted from the eight-storey residential complex called Moon Garden, raised illegally on encroached land of Pakistan Railways. Confused, bewildered, angry and resentful men, women and children, most of them have been living in the building since three years, sat down outside the building, hoping for humanitarian redressal of their problem. Of course the builder is the main culprit who sold the apartments with fake documentations, but let us not pretends the apartment owners are innocent victims.
This is a wellknown racket of builders. They build illegal structures, get fake No Objection Certificates (NOC), buyers move in and one fine day they are given eviction orders. They weep and moan, now get footage on the TV channels, telling the entire world they have been victimised. There are petitions and pleas in court and ultimately the authorities and the court are pressurised to allow the people to continue to live in the illegal building. This is called 'regularisation' of illegal occupation. Rest assured it will be the same with the Moon Garden affair. It will not be the first or the last to be regularised. This is the cancer of Karachi in all segments of society, from kuchi abaadis, apartment buildings and grand bungalows of the rich. It exists and spreads because builders and buyers both know they will ultimately get their way.
There are simply scores of such cases all over the city. Neither builders of illegal structures not the occupants feel guilty they are indulging in a crime. It is rare that an innocent person is victimised. Both parties know just what they are doing. In the case of Moon Garden one resident said he had obtained a search certificate from the Karachi Building Control Authority showing the place to be legal. That is hardly an excuse. Moon Garden stands on Railways land, near the place where there is the track of the abandoned Circular Railway. While the Circular Railway is abandoned it does not change the status of the land to a commercial plot. Everyone knows that. At least the people who purchased apartments would know that, since they belong to the middle-class. They are not illiterate settlers of kuchi abaadis. A thousand NOCs would not change the status of the land.
I know from personal experience that even estate agents sponsor this charade of pseudo legality based on an NOC. When I was in the market to buy a two-bedroom apartment in Defence, my agent showed me beautiful newly-built flats, but they were all in four and five-storey commercial area buildings. I knew only ground plus three was allowed. I refused to buy one of these beautiful apartments. He said, then I would get a flat in one of the old (dilapidated, is what he implied) commercial area apartment buildings I agreed to buy one. He was puzzled at my refusing better-built apartments for one which needed repairs. I told him it was legal. Nobody would throw me out of it. I would sleep in peace with a clear conscience.
In my area only the buildings my agent called 'old' are ground plus three. Everywhere the new structures are plus four five and even six, if you include the basement. Builders, buyers, agents and greedy staff in every housing society are involved in perpetuating illegal structures. Added to the illegality of buildings is another cancer, power theft. Most new buildings if they are illegal do not get power connection. The Moon Garden for instance does not have connections. The residence gets power through the kunda. They do not feel guilty because they claim now the kunda has been legalised as the residents of Moon Garden have paid for two pole-mounted transformers. They do not have meters though. So how is the kunda legalised? This is just self-delusion.
The flat owners supremely ignorant, that Moon Garden has been in litigation since 2007, initiated by the Pakistan Railways Employees Co-operative Housing Society Limited. In 2008 a petition was also filed in the Sindh High Court against Building Control Authority and the builder. Surely, if you were to purchase a flat in Moon Garden you would know these developments. Yet you purchased the flat and lived in it until you were evicted. How can any responsible citizen have sympathy for such people?
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