SBCA approves only 1,039 public sale housing projects in 16 years

KARACHI: The Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA) has approved only 1,039 public sale housing projects in Karachi over the past 16 years, while 7,230 applications remain pending. This backlog, critics said, has pushed the buyers toward “portion mafias” across the city.

Exclusive data obtained by Business Recorder shows that of 8,269 total cases filed across Karachi’s towns, schemes, and cooperative housing societies, fewer than one in eight applications has cleared the approval process during the period.

The figures, spanning more than 40 localities, have shown SBCA to be what critics described as functioning less as an approval body, but more as an obstacle to legitimate development.

The data showed that Gadap Town alone had 2,465 pending cases out of 2,623, depicting a 94 percent pendency rate. Gadap Town, long troubled by land grabbing, represents roughly 34 percent of all pending public sale project applications citywide. Bin Qasim Town adds another 632 pending cases out of 725, an 87 percent pendency rate. Both rapidly urbanising towns (Gadap and Bin Qasim) have accounted for around 40 percent of the city’s entire backlog.

Similarly, the city’s largely built-out districts, where informal “portion mafias” are said to be entrenched, have shown nearly 50 percent pendency. The disparity is starker when measured by approval rate rather than raw numbers.

Gulshan out of 1131 cases got approval in 179 cases, Jamshed town has 343 cases pending of 464 cases, Liaquatabad got 25 cases approved of 96 cases, Korangi has only 22 approved cases of 274 cases, North Nazimabad has 35 out of 161 submissions, PECHS has 15 of 25 cases, Saddar has 132 of 419 cases, Gulshan, Gulzar-e-Hijri and Johar has 38 of 140 cases.

Interestingly, Manghopir has only 2 approvals of 282 applications. Landhi has 6 of 372, Shah Faisal has 16 of 336, and Scheme 41 in Surjani Town has 6 of 259 cases.

Sources said the disparity does not reflect uniformly slow processing but selective handling. “SBCA approvals depend on location, connections, or which officer’s desk a file lands on,” sources said.

Reacting to the data, ABAD chairman Muhammad Hassan Bakshi described the numbers as “really shocking,” arguing that instead of easing the process to clear legitimate projects, SBCA is effectively incentivising illegal construction in the city.

“Every legitimate application stuck in a multi-year queue is either a stalled project or one that migrates into illegal construction, leaving law-abiding developers penalised relative to those who build projects without SBCA approval but through speed-money,” Bakshi said.

Bakshi has been criticising SBCA’s table-to-table approval process for years, which he termed a discretionary, multi-desk system in which individual officials hold sign-off authority at each stage. The SBCA’s table-to-table approval process causes delays that promote corruption, he said, calling for full digitisation to ensure transparency in the system.

Needless to mention, SBCA’s operational failures have led to legal action against its officers in recent years. And the Sindh government, following widespread complaints against the SBCA, circulated a draft of the SBCA Act 2025 in September 2025, proposing an expanded, more accountable governing structure, along with criminal, non-bailable penalties for violations. However, nearly a year later, the draft has yet to be approved by the cabinet.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2026