ISLAMABAD: City managers see big money in the ‘wasteland’ of Islamabad, but also big resistance to their plans to exploit it for the cash-strapped Capital Development Authority (CDA).

“There is great potential for minting billions from the land lots in the residential sectors which our predecessors had classified as wasteland for their irregular size or steep ground slopes,” said a senior CDA officer sharing with Dawn the plan to auction more than 500 such land lots in the city.

One estimate is that the auction of the lots in F-6 and F-7 prime sectors alone would earn CDA Rs40 billon.

But the collapse of a similar attempt made in 2012, at the hidden hands of people in possession of some 200 lots of wasteland, still haunts the CDA planners. Only one lot could be auctioned in 2012 because other lot holders obtained restraining orders from the courts.

They had the legal cover that CDA itself had permitted them to annex the so-called wasteland adjoining their houses under its beautification scheme of the past years.

The permission allowed the lot holder to develop lawn and flowerbeds to add to the beauty of Islamabad.

Those behind the new CDA plan, however, remind that it was not a blanket permission, neither it granted exclusive rights to the wasteland to the lot holders. Indeed, it bound them not to enclose the wasteland, raise any structure on it or bar access to public – restrictions that most of them defied brazenly.

“There are two choices for the CDA now - either leave these prime spots in the hands of few or sell them and make money for the CDA,” said the officer. “We must act as the wastelands are being gradually annexed by the neighbouring house owner.”

It was the Planning and Design Wing of the CDA that granted the beautification permission, but it fell to Estate Wing’s Enforcement Department to check that all the conditions were being observed.

However, confronting such influential lot holders as weighty politicians, lawmakers, federal secretaries and other bureaucrats has always been, and remains, a daunting proposition. “It is the most serious challenge for us. Those who gain valuable property for free in the name of beautification will surely obtain stay order from the courts,” admitted a CDA staff member.

Director Enforcement Mohammad Iqbal told Dawn that action can follow only if there existed a policy.

“We need not only a CDA policy to enforce law by demolishing boundary walls and fixed structures raised at such lots but also support of the political leadership of the country for taking action,” said the director.

Many politicians with rural background have raised structures on their wasteland lots for their guards and visitors from their constituencies.

And one bureaucrat, living near the official residence of Chairman CDA in F-7, has made the garden he developed on the wasteland lot part of his house.