Bahria Town makes a whopping Rs 479 billion settlement offer
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ISLAMABAD - The Supreme Court of Pakistan seemed unfazed with Bahria Town’s latest offer of Rs. 479.56 billion as a full and final settlement of all three cases against the real estate giant.
A three-member implementation bench was hearing the case with Justice Azmat Saeed in the chair.
Barrister Ali Zafar is representing the business mogul Malik Riaz’s firm, Bahria Town Pvt. Ltd., in the cases of illegal occupation of land for his projects in the Bahria Town Karachi Super Highway, Takht Pari Forest, and the Sulkhtar and Manga.
Barrister Ali Zafar, who made an offer of Rs. 405 billion earlier, has now raised it to Rs. 479.598 for all three cases.
Today, when Bahria Town counsel made an offer to pay Rs. 435 billion for Bahria Town Karachi over a period of nine years – Justice Saeed asked him to turn this into a “round figure.”
On February 15, Bahria Town had offered to pay Rs. 405 billion in 9 years to settle the case.
According to the offer, the business mogul was supposed to submit an amount of Rs. 2 billion every month for the first six years – and Rs. 1 billion per month for the rest of the period. But, the top court rejected the offer saying that the money offered did not suffice for the thousands of acres of land that Malik Riaz acquired illegally.
“In 2014, Supreme Court had directed the real estate mogul to pay Rs. 225 billion to legalize 7,000 acres of land. If one marks that up by 40 percent [to account for inflation, other factors], the number comes up to Rs 315 billion,” Justice Saeed had noted.
He clarified that the offer of Rs. 315 billion was just for 7,068 acres of land, not for all 16,896 acres of land.
