LAHORE: In a major move to address rampant irregularities in the real estate sector, the Punjab government has announced plans to regularize more than 5,000 illegal or unapproved housing schemes across the province to safeguard the investments of ordinary citizens.
The decision came during a high-level meeting chaired by Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz on Saturday. Officials briefed the CM that out of 7,905 housing societies occupying around two million kanals of land in Punjab, only 2,687 are officially approved. The remaining 5,118 are considered illegal or are awaiting approval, including 206 schemes under the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) alone.
CM Maryam Nawaz expressed strong disapproval of how such a vast number of unregulated housing societies were allowed to operate. “Government departments share responsibility for the unchecked proliferation of these illegal schemes,” she said. “These housing societies were allowed to flourish with the collusion of various authorities, yet the people who bought plots are the ones left to suffer.”
Calling for immediate action, the chief minister directed officials to fast-track the regularisation process under legal frameworks, aiming to bring relief to affected citizens. She also ordered the elimination of redundant NoC requirements, the digitisation of the housing approval system, and the introduction of an online management platform for housing societies. This would include digital NoC payments, streamlined approval processes, and online transfers and development oversight.
However, no clear guidelines were provided on how the government plans to handle housing societies that illegally occupied land or sold plots in excess of what they legally owned. Nor was there a framework proposed for dealing with societies that used bribes to obtain legal cover but are now facing fraud allegations.
Currently, numerous cases of housing fraud involving billions of rupees are pending with the National Accountability Bureau (NAB). These include cases where politically backed developers have allegedly launched the same society under different names and sold plots multiple times.
A senior official told that unless the government creates a transparent and enforceable regularisation mechanism, the move could potentially fuel corruption instead of curbing it. “The flawed regulatory framework has allowed these societies to flourish unchecked,” he said, adding that recent legal amendments have also weakened NAB’s oversight—preventing it from investigating housing scams involving less than Rs500 million.
The official warned that without proper checks, the regularization drive could become a backdoor amnesty for powerful real estate groups, further undermining public trust.
