The lawyer told the court that authorities were demolishing houses without notice or warning, saying it was unjustified
Life goes on in Muslim Colony, a slum near the Prime Minister’s House and the Presidency: PHOTO: MUDASSAR RAJA
The Islamabad High Court has ordered the Capital Development Authority (CDA) to suspend its operations in the Muslim colony of Katchi Abadi. The court issued a notice to the CDA and sought a response by December 16.
During the hearing, the petitioner’s lawyer argued that thousands of people live in the katchi abadi, which is part of the Bari Imam area and has existed since 1960. The lawyer said the Supreme Court (SC) had already directed the authorities to develop a mechanism for managing the katchi abadi, adding that the Muslim colony includes the localities of Noor Pur and Bari Imam.
The Awami Workers’ Party filed a petition in the SC in July 2015, when the CDA and then the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz bulldozed a settlement of over 20,000 Pashtun workers on I-11. The SC not only considered this petition but also issued a stay order against any further summary expulsion.
The AWP said the court had asked the CDA as well as the federal government to demonstrate that they had a viable plan to meet the housing demands of low-income segments of the urban population, but over the past decade, Islamabad and other major cities in the country have increasingly become hostage to real estate developers, speculators and land grabbers.
The lawyer told the court that the CDA was demolishing houses without notice or warning, describing the operation as unjustified and asking the court to stop it. Justice Raja Inam Amin Minhas later ordered the CDA to stop the operation.
Read: Katchi Abadi residents invoke constitutional right to housing amid CDA crackdown
The hearing was adjourned until December 16.
Representatives of dozens of katchi abadis, street vendors and other working class organizations from across the federal capital recently held a press conference on December 4 at the National Press Club to demand an end to the wave of evictions launched by the CDA in recent weeks and called on the higher courts to uphold their constitutional right to housing and livelihood.
Leaders of the Awami Workers’ Party, All-Pakistan Alliance Katchi Abadi and Anjuman Rehribaan appealed to the SC and the newly created Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) to uphold the stay order passed by the SC in 2015 in response to a constitutional petition filed by the AWP that imposed a moratorium on summary evictions.
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Alia Amirali, leader of the AWP, said the CDA and ICT have recently intensified so-called “anti-encroachment operations” against scores of working-class housing as well as street vendors, informal hoteliers and others, while granting free license to big real estate tycoons and big businessmen to build illegal housing projects and commercial plazas.
She said this brazen class war goes against all the original legal injunctions and planning principles of the CDA ordinance, and the Master Plan has become a total travesty. She noted that an officer was brought from Lahore to head the CDA’s enforcement division and its drive to evict the poor, in complete violation of all rules.
