ISLAMABAD (The Thursday Times) — The Capital Development Authority has given Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s residence in Islamabad’s G-6 sector 15 days to remove a guards’ room and other construction it says is unauthorised and illegal.
A warning notice from the authority’s Directorate of Building Control (City), dated Friday and pasted outside the house, lists three violations of the Islamabad Capital Territory Building Control Regulations: construction in the building’s setbacks, a guard post built on CDA land, and a generator placed on CDA land.
According to the notice, the owner submitted an affidavit on March 18, 2019, when a no-objection certificate was issued, undertaking to remove the setback violations within three months and to follow all regulations. “However, it has been noticed that no compliance is made,” the CDA said.
If the violations are not removed within the deadline, the authority said it could seal or demolish the structures and begin proceedings to cancel the allotment of the property under the CDA Ordinance and the building control regulations.
The residence, in Sector G-6/4, has often hosted political consultations, with visitors including Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari.
Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said on Friday that action against encroachments on state land in the capital would continue without discrimination and that no institution or individual would be allowed to occupy government land. He supervised the demolition of the Khanna police station building, which stood on the green belt along the Islamabad Expressway, and said a Federal Constabulary camp office on a green belt had been removed months earlier.
The authority has also issued notices to two seminaries reportedly run by JUI-F-affiliated clerics, in Islamabad’s F-8/3 sector and in Bilal Town near Korang Nullah, over alleged construction without approval. JUI-F leader Maulana Asjad Mahmood said the CDA had objected to an extra kitchen in the setback area, a guard cabin and a generator outside the house, adding: “All the institutions are bent upon victimising an individual.”
Update, October 31: Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry said the capital’s anti-encroachment campaign would continue “regardless of political influence”, with “zero tolerance” for encroachments. He said the notice to the house, owned by Amanullah, was a “completely simple” routine one giving 15 days to remove a four-by-four security cabin and a generator outside a large property in an upscale area, where neighbours had received and complied with similar notices. Notices had gone out in “every other street” of Islamabad over the past year and a half, he said, calling the defence of encroachments “inappropriate”.
