KARACHI, May 9: The government has decided to carve out 22,000 plots on the 2200 acres available land and allot them through ballots among 32,000 applicants of New Malir Housing Society Project and refund the amount to those allottees who were no more interested to own plots in the scheme.

This decision was taken in compliance with the decision of Sindh High Court in a meeting held on Thursday under the chairmanship of Sindh

Chief Secretary Muhammad Javed Ashraf Hussain and attended by city Nazim, secretary Housing and Town Planning, DCO Karachi, Member Board of Revenue (LU), DG MDA and EDO (Revenue) Karachi.

The project was to take off in 1977 but it was delayed due to dispute over land and controversial agreement with Maxim Marketing which is under investigation with RAB.

The meeting besides removing bottlenecks in execution of New Malir Housing Scheme also finalized modalities for refund of money to the allottees who were no more interested to own plots in the scheme.

According to the decision, a committee had been constituted under the chairmanship of DCO Karachi to examine the ownership claim of any private person on the 2,200 acres of Malir Development Authority land and negotiate the applicants to relocate them in the same area so that development work of the scheme should not affect.

The members of the committee are: DG MDA, DIG (Operations) Karachi, Town Nazim Bin Qasim and EDO (Revenue) Karachi.

Engineers of city district government, officers of MDA and EDO (Revenue) Karachi would carry out complete joint demarcation of the available land in seven days and after demarcation, the MDA would redesign the project, including roads and other facilities.

The city Nazim would get the approval of the project from the city district council and after taking a briefing from the MDA would make a presentation before Corps Commander Karachi to seek his help for resolving the issue of remaining disputed land with the ministry of defence.