No, Bahria Town Has Not Been Declared Illegal , Here Is What CDA Actually Issued, and to Whom

Bahria Town has not been declared illegal by any authority, and the Capital Development Authority has not issued notices to Bahria Town residents as a class. What CDA has issued, across December 2025 and January 2026, is a series of show-cause notices addressed to M/s Bahria Town (Pvt) Ltd, the sponsor, covering four named schemes. Every notice Milkiyat has reviewed on CDA's own public notice register is addressed to the developer's Deputy Chief Executive at the Bahria Town Phase-8 head office in Rawalpindi. None is addressed to an allottee.

That distinction is the whole story, and it is the part being lost as the claim circulates.

What has CDA actually published about Bahria Town?

CDA maintains a public notice register on its official website, and every enforcement notice it issues to a private housing scheme sponsor is uploaded there — the notices themselves carry an instruction to the Director (IT) to publish them "for awareness of the general public and all stakeholders."

Five Bahria-related items appear on that register:

No Bahria-specific notice appears on the register after 21 May 2026.

Has CDA sent notices to individual Bahria Town homeowners?

No notice on CDA's public register is addressed to an individual allottee, transferee, or resident of any Bahria Town phase.

Reports circulating in August 2026 describe notices sent to homeowners in Phases 1 to 6 over houses allegedly built on land marked as open space in a layout plan approved on 30 August 2000, referencing a transfer deed executed in May 2001. Milkiyat could not locate any notice matching that description on CDA's public register, and could not verify the transfer deed reference against a primary document. Until such a notice is produced, the claim should be treated as unverified.

There is a plausible source of the confusion. On 29 April 2026, CDA published a notice titled "Notice for construction of illegal buildings on amenities/public building plots already transferred to CDA." The title matches the circulating claim almost exactly. The document itself is addressed to the Secretary of M/s IBECHS and concerns Gulberg Greens Farm Housing Scheme in Zone-4, specifically buildings under construction at Plot Nos. PB-29 and PB-02, measuring 40 kanals and 93.28 kanals on Gulberg Expressway. It has nothing to do with Bahria Town.

What does a show-cause notice actually do?

A show-cause notice is a demand for a written explanation within a stated period. It is a procedural step that opens an enforcement process; it is not an adjudication, and it does not by itself cancel a layout plan, withdraw an NOC, or invalidate anyone's allotment.

The CDA notices reviewed here each give the sponsor seven days to reply and offer a personal hearing in the same window. They also list the punitive actions CDA may initiate if the sponsor does not comply: cancellation of the approved layout plan, referral to investigating agencies including NAB and FIA, suspension of building plan approvals for the scheme, sealing of society and site offices, and suspension of processing on the sponsor's other pending cases.

Each of those is a consequence CDA states it may pursue. None of them has been recorded as executed on the public register for any Bahria scheme as of the date of this article.

What is in the Phase III-E and IV notice?

The most substantive of the notices is dated 15 January 2026 and covers Bahria Town Phase-III-E and IV in Zone-5.

CDA states that the layout plan for the scheme was approved on 8 December 2010, covering 2,999 kanals in Mouza Kotha Kalan and Mouza Humak and comprising 2,730 residential plots alongside other land uses. The authority states that the sponsor failed to complete the prerequisites for obtaining an NOC despite roughly fifteen years elapsing, and instead carried out development works and sold plots before an NOC was issued which the notice describes as a violation of the CDA Ordinance 1960 and the ICT (Zoning) Regulation 1992.

The notice records that violations were shown to Bahria Town representatives at a meeting held in the office of Member (Planning & Development) on 15 May 2025, and states that no executive of the company attended.

It then tabulates eleven specific deviations between approved land use and use observed at site:

The notice further records that during a site visit on 6 January 2026, a new building was observed under construction on land earmarked as park along Cornice Road.

Separately, the notice cites Audit Para 3.4.65/2023-24 framed by the Directorate General of Federal Audit, titled "Illegal Construction of Commercial Building along Corniche Road, Bahria Town Phase III-E & IV Zone-5, without prior approval from the CDA and Violation of the Layout Plan." It states that the Departmental Accounts Committee, headed by the Secretary of the Ministry of Interior, discussed the para and ordered removal of illegal commercial buildings constructed in the river bed, graveyard and park/open space.

Milkiyat.com finding: what the eleven deviations add up to

Milkiyat classified each of the eleven tabulated deviations by the land use recorded at site.

Ten of the eleven rows record a legible converted use. Of those ten:

• Commercial or part-commercial: 6 — graveyard at Cornice Road, park at Cornice Road, two public building plots, the river bed plot, and the school-and-playground plot (recorded as football club / commercial)
• Parking: 3 — the masjid plot, the open space at Main Boulevard Civic Center, and the park at Street No. 21
• Residential: 1 — the graveyard at Street No. 53

6 ÷ 10 = 60% of legible deviations convert amenity or public land to commercial or part-commercial use.

A second cut, by the land use lost rather than gained:

• Parks and open spaces: 4 of 11
• Graveyard: 2 of 11
• Public building plots: 2 of 11
• Masjid, river bed, school and playground: 1 each

3 of the 11 deviations — two graveyard plots and one masjid plot — involve land designated for religious or burial use.

On elapsed time: the layout plan was approved on 8 December 2010 and the notice is dated 15 January 2026. That is 15 years and 1 month during which, on CDA's own account, no NOC was obtained while 2,999 kanals were developed and plots were sold.

Method: counts taken directly from the eleven-row table in the CDA notice dated 15 January 2026. The end-use entry for one row (open space north of SE Boulevard Road) was not legible in the published scan and is excluded from the 60% calculation; it is retained in all counts of eleven. Percentages rounded to the nearest whole number.

Does any of this affect an existing Bahria Town allottee?

Not directly, and not automatically. The notices are directed at the sponsor's conduct, and the remedies CDA lists — layout plan cancellation, sealing of offices, referral to investigating agencies — are remedies against the sponsor.

The indirect exposure is real but narrower than the circulating claim suggests, and it works through three channels.

Transfer friction. Where a scheme has no NOC, CDA does not process vetting of allotment and transfer letters. That is a stated consequence in CDA's own correspondence to housing scheme sponsors, and it affects the paperwork trail behind a resale rather than the validity of an existing allotment.

Building plan approvals. Suspension of building plan approval for a scheme is on CDA's list of punitive actions. A buyer intending to construct is more exposed than a buyer holding a developed, occupied house.

Amenity plots specifically. The eleven deviations concern plots that were designated for parks, graveyards, a masjid, public buildings, a school and a river bed. A structure standing on land in one of those categories sits in a different position from a residential plot allotted inside the approved grid. This is the check a buyer can actually perform: match the plot number against the approved layout plan land use, not against the sales office's map.

Anyone holding or considering a property in an affected phase should obtain the approved layout plan for that specific phase from CDA and confirm the land-use designation of the individual plot before transacting. That single step separates the residential inventory from the disputed amenity land.

What has not been established?

Four things, all of which are being asserted online and none of which Milkiyat could verify against a primary document:

• That any authority has declared Bahria Town, or any Bahria phase, illegal. No such declaration appears on CDA's public register.
• That CDA has issued notices to Bahria Town residents as a class.
• That the reported Phases 1–6 resident notices exist in the form described, referencing a 30 August 2000 layout plan and a May 2001 transfer deed.
• That any of the December 2025 or January 2026 notices has resulted in layout plan cancellation, NOC withdrawal, or demolition.

Milkiyat requested comment from Bahria Town (Pvt) Ltd and will update this article if a response is received.

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