Islamabad, 2nd December 2025 – Representatives of dozens of katchi abadis, street vendors and other working class organisationfrom across the federal capital held a press conference at the National Press Club on Tuesday to call attention to demand an end to the wave of evictions launched by the Capital Development Authorities (CDA) in recent weeks and simultaneously appeal to the superior courts to uphold their constitutional right to housingand livelihoods. Addressing the press, leaders of the Awami Workers Party, All-Pakistan Katchi Abadi Alliance and Anjuman Rehribaan appealed to the Supreme Court and newly created Federal Constitutional Court to uphold the stary order given by the Supreme Court in 2015 to a constitutional petition filed by the AWP that put a moratorium on summary evictions.
AWP leader Alia Amirali said that the CDA and ICT have recently intensified so-called ‘anti-encroachment operations’ against both a host of working class homes as well as street vendors, informal hoteliers and others whilst giving free license to big real estate moguls and big businessmen to build illegal housing schemes and commercial plazas. She said that this brazen class war goes against all of the original legal injunctions and planning principles of the CDA ordinance, and that the Master Plan has become a complete travesty. She noted that an officer has been brought in from Lahore to spearhead the CDA’s enforcement division and its anti-poor eviction drive in complete contravention of all rules.
Katchi abadi leaders Patras Joseph, Mir Azam, Muhammad Riaz, Rukhsana Qazi, Amanat Mashih, Ahmed Guddu and many othersfrom sectors I-10, I-9, Muslim Colony Barim Imam, Saidpur village, H9, Alipur Farash, France Colony, 100 Quarters F6, G-8 Miskeen Musharraf Colony, G7 Allama Iqbal Colony and H11 Muzaffar Colony said that it is the working people living in katchiabadis who have built, sustained, fed and cleaned Islamabad since its inception and they have a right to the city which is enshrined in the constitution. They noted that the AWP filed a petition in the SC in July 2015 when the CDA and then PML-N bulldozed a settlement of more than 20,000 Pashtun workers in I-11 and the Supreme Court not only entertained this petition but issued a stay order against any further summary evictions. They said that the court had instructed the CDA as well as the federal government to demonstrate that it had a viable plan to deal with the housing demands of low-income segments of the urban population but in the intervening decade Islamabad and other big cities in the country have become increasingly hostage to real estate developers, speculators and land grabbers, meaning that the shortfall of housing for the urban poor has only worsened and this is why katchi abadis continue to come into being.
Representative of the Anjuman Rehribaan Rana Sherbaz said street vendors and other working people in Islamabad are also denied their constitutional rights to earn a living. They noted that the CDA regularly confiscates street vendor carts and arbitrary police cases are filed against them despite they fact that they have repeatedly approached and been vindicated by the Islamabad High Court. The law enforcement take small bribes to maintain the system of vulnerability but refuse to provide permanent licenses that would guarantee some money to the public exchequer. These law enforcement authorities are completely exempt from any accountability for their actions. This is why working people are almost completely disillusioned with slogans such as the ‘rule of law’ because in practice the law provides no relief to those without money and influence.
Alia Amirali and other AWP leaders noted that their principled demand is for katchi abadi dwellers to be regularised in their current locations or to be resettled in accordance with the law. She gave the example of H9 katchi abadi which is being closed in on all sides by the construction of 10th avenue but as of now neither the CDA nor the government has provided any indication that they will offer alternative shelter to the thousands of residents of the abadi. She said that if the evictions continue unabated, katchiabadi dwellers, street vendors and other working class populations in Islamabad would do a sit-in outside the CDA office to demand an end to the injustices against them.
All the speakers said that peaceful resistance to dispossession is their constitutional right and that they are increasingly concerned that the 27th constitutional amendment has created a lacunaeregarding the status of the 2015 stay order which they CDA is currently exploiting. They appealed to the Supreme Court and the newly established Federal Constitutional Court to maintain that shelter is a basic constitutional right of all. If the state is not willing to provide affordable housing and employment to working people then it should not deprive them of the katchi abadis and vending cards that they have constructed through their own labour and without any support from the authorities.