ISLAMABAD: The Capital Development Authority (CDA) has constituted a three-member legal team to challenge the Islamabad High Court’s (IHC) stay order that halted an anti-encroachment operation around the Prime Minister’s Office and the Diplomatic Enclave.

The team, comprising CDA standing counsel Advocate Kashif Ali Malik, Nazeer Jawad and Amir Latif Gill, has been directed to immediately file an application seeking vacation of the stay order and to place survey records, security assessments and compensation data before the court.

The IHC had issued the restraining order while hearing a writ petition moved by Advocate Ali Hussain Bhatti on behalf of petitioners Muhammad Arif Qureshi and another resident of Muslim Colony, who alleged harassment by the ICT administration and CDA during a week-long demolition campaign targeting the decades-old katchi abadi.

The petitioners claimed that Muslim Colony was recognised by the CDA’s own Katchi Abadi Cell and that the operation violated residents’ rights in the absence of due process.

Following the court’s order, the CDA’s law wing circulated an internal communication expressing concern that the “security-sensitive clearance operation” had been stalled despite the area being adjacent to the Diplomatic Enclave. The letter instructed the legal team to justify before the court that the encroachments posed planning and security challenges and that a strategy was being formulated to resolve the matter within the legal framework.

In compliance with the IHC’s directions, the CDA also submitted a detailed report on Bari Imam, where a camp office had been established to verify residents’ claims. Land and revenue officers conducted a door-to-door notice distribution campaign and collected applications from residents.

After verification, the CDA categorised the inhabitants into those listed in the 2001 CDA survey who remain uncompensated, persons compensated earlier but still occupying houses, approximately 90 Kargil War-affected families awaiting payments, post-2005 earthquake settlers and post-2010 migrants who expanded the settlement towards the rear of the Prime Minister House.

The CDA reported that 37 houses were vacated on the first day and that nearly 70 per cent of residents voluntarily began dismantling their structures before formal operations commenced.

The authority recommended that the Supreme Court direct the DC Skardu to process outstanding dues of Kargil affectees, and that records of the 2001 survey be retrieved so that legitimate claimants may be compensated through a summary prepared for the CDA Board.

Meanwhile, the Awami Workers Party (AWP) strongly criticised the demolitions in Muslim Colony, terming them a “brazen violation” of the Supreme Court’s 2015 stay order against summary evictions. AWP leader Alia Amirali said the party had filed a petition in the apex court after the large-scale demolition of the I-11 Katchi Abadi in 2015, upon which the court had explicitly restrained the CDA and the federation from conducting evictions without a viable housing plan for low-income residents.

Amirali said that despite Islamabad’s population having grown nearly fourfold over two decades, the CDA and successive governments continued to pursue “elitist planning” while neglecting the acute shortage of low-income housing.

She alleged that while Katchi Abadis, old villages such as Saidpur, street vendors and informal workers were subjected to demolition drives, “real estate developers, speculators and major commercial actors are granted free licence to expand illegal housing schemes and plazas.”

Calling the current operations a “class war,” Amirali urged the Supreme Court to take notice of the ongoing evictions and reiterated the AWP’s longstanding demand that Katchi Abadi residents be regularised or resettled lawfully.

She cited the example of the H-9 Abadi, now encircled by the construction of 10th Avenue, where neither the CDA nor the government had offered alternative shelter. She warned that if evictions continued unchecked, Katchi Abadi dwellers, street vendors and working-class communities would stage a sit-in outside the CDA office.

Published in Dawn, December 9th, 2025