ISLAMABAD: The city managers have decided to change the bylaws of housing societies, under which instead of cancelling the entire layout plan action will be taken only against the specific portion of a society where violations have been made.

“We are going to make changes to the bylaws to protect rights of citizens and keep a complete check on operators of housing schemes,” said CDA Chairman Amer Ali Ahmed.

Talking to Dawn, he said in the upcoming board meeting the new policy/bylaws will be discussed.

He said the concerned wing will be bound not to cancel the entire layout plan of any scheme rather action should be taken against only the defected area.

He said instead of getting bank guarantees the CDA was also planning to get personal guarantee from the owner of a housing scheme so that they could not disassociate themselves from the scheme after selling plots.

The CDA after issuing layout plans of housing schemes used to cancel the entire plan when violations were reported.

However, the CDA management has now decided that only the specific portion where violation is committed will be cancelled to protect the right of people whose plots, houses fall on other areas of society.

The layout plan is the blueprint of any housing society which is approved by CDA allowing the operators to develop it.

The approval of the layout plan does not allow the operators to sell plots. Plots can be sold after getting a non-objection certificate (NOC) which is issued when the society develops the scheme in accordance with the layout plan.

However, CDA officials said many societies after getting approved their layout plans sold out plots and when the CDA cancelled the layout plans the buyers of plots faced the consequences.

“When we cancelled the layout plan of an entire scheme, all those who made investment in the society faced problems. In many cases, without any violations, people just because of the cancelled LOP/NOC were not eligible to get utility connections or loans from banks,” said an official.

Currently, there are over 100 unauthorised housing schemes in Islamabad and most of them got approval of their layout plan which was cancelled later.

There are only around 20 legitimate housing schemes with valid LOP and NOCs.

On the other hand, thousands of residents of unauthorised housing schemes have been suffering as they are ineligible to get utility connections.

Officials shuffled

The CDA management shuffled officials in the planning wing. Director architecture Arshad Chohan has been appointed as the director housing societies in place of Faraz Malik, who has been appointed as the director regional planning.

Similarly, deputy director housing societies Touqeer Nawaz Awan has been appointed as the director master plan.

Published in Dawn, December 15th, 2021