iSLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court on Tuesday granted security to all residents of One Constitution Avenue and restrained the Capital Development Authority from undertaking any coercive measures against flat owners, including the buyer of an expensive flat owned by the former prime minister of Pakistan Imran Khan, until the next hearing.
The two-member division bench consisted of Justices Mohammad Azam Khan and Raja Inaam Ameen Minhas, who had been approached by those aggrieved with the decision of a single bench, which effectively denied sub-lessees their separate ownership status. The bench directed CDA to hold off on any eviction or dispossession moves while the appeals proceed.
The man now at the centre of the Imran Khan apartment thread is Shahid Naseer. He acquired the two-bedroom, 11th-floor unit in Tower C through a serviced apartment booking agreement with developer BNP (Pvt) Limited in July 2022, paying Rs93.575 million as the agreed price. Naseer and co-appellant Zainab Ahsan have since filed a separate application seeking formal inclusion as parties in the intra-court appeal. He has already transferred Rs45.5 million nearly half the total consideration by wire. The apartment, measuring approximately 1,970 square feet, should have changed hands by August 2022. BNP never delivered it, and CDA never issued a completion certificate.
A Dispute Two Decades in the Making
The original lease between CDA and BNP dates to 2005, when the authority awarded the 13.5-acre Red Zone site for a five-star hotel. The conversion to luxury residential apartments happened across successive governments. CDA cancelled the lease in 2016 for non-payment; the Supreme Court restored it in 2019 under strict conditions, ordering BNP to pay Rs17.5 billion in instalments backed by bank guarantees. BNP paid only Rs2.9 billion — roughly 16.6% of the total — before the lease collapsed again.
Last month, IHC Chief Justice Sardar Mohammad Sarfraz Dogar upheld the cancellation and ruled that flat buyers carry no independent ownership title their fate, in the court’s words, rises or sinks with BNP’s legal standing. This judgment created an instant crisis as the officials from CDA started visiting the buildings for evictions, breaking down doors if required. The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Shehbaz Sharif, stopped this on May 1st and set up a committee to analyze the matter.
The Elite Buyer List
The One Constitution Avenue ownership register reads like a who’s who of Pakistan’s establishment. Among those who held or still hold units are former air chief Mujahid Anwar Khan, former ICC chairman Ehsan Mani, former State Bank governor Ashraf Wathra, and retired naval chief Mohammad Asif Sandila. Court records show 240 flats went to the country’s power elite including former acting presidents, a former Senate chairman, former chief justices, and a former defence minister.
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Among new details surfacing in the court record: a 2012 interim arbitration award carrying the signature of incumbent Defence Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif, acting then as a private citizen — and a former chamber president, brought in to settle a dispute between BNP’s two founding partners.
The buyer agreements themselves offered scant protection. BNP could forfeit up to 25% of a buyer’s money on default; if BNP itself defaulted, the buyer’s sole remedy was to terminate the contract after December 31, 2023, and recover payments minus a 6% annual surcharge already disbursed. Most residents never got that far possession never materialised in the first place.
