THE Islamabad bench of the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC), while rejecting a plea seeking to stop the construction of a commercial high-rise building on a residential plot in Karachi’s Gulshan-i-Faisal Cooperative Society, recently observed that “if the building was even-tually found illegal, it can be demolished”. Let the construction continue, it was held. The bench further observed that if the building was eventually found to be illegal, it could be demolished like Nasla Tower, which was declared illegal years after its completion and was demolished even though many people had invested their hard-earned money in the building.

The court could not appreciate that in the case of Nasla Tower, hardship the hapless owners of the flats suffered was on account of the illegality done by the builder rather than by them. The residents not only wasted their lifetime savings which they invested in the flats but some of them also lost their precious lives as a consequence. Let us pray the case of Nasla Tower is not repeated once again.

Name withheld on request
Karachi

Published in Dawn, June 25th, 2026