Nadeem Haque@nadeemhaque
Short Economic Cost Estimate: One Constitution Avenue Midnight Eviction
The 1 AM raid with 200 heavily armored policemen (each deployment costing an estimated Rs 50,000 in overtime, logistics, transport and equipment) already imposed an immediate Rs 10 million burden on the public exchequer. That is taxpayer money spent to evict law-abiding residents instead of funding productive public services.
Direct private costs to residents
At minimum, 50 affected households face Rs 0.5 million each in immediate moving, temporary accommodation, lost wages and disruption — totalling Rs 25 million. With 500 families ultimately displaced, the full moving and relocation bill scales to Rs 250–500 million. Add legal defence costs, storage of belongings, school disruptions for children, and emotional distress (impossible to price but very real). Street-level chaos, traffic blockades, and secondary costs (extra security, emergency services, potential property damage during the raid) conservatively add another Rs 50–100 million.
Asset destruction
The building’s collective market value — hundreds of apartments formally recognised and sold over 20 years — sits at Rs 15–25 billion. Overnight, this private equity is erased and transferred to the CDA, the very regulator that slept for 29 years while the project was built and apartments were sold.
Total direct cost to the economy: Rs 15.3–26 billion in a single night.
Broader economic signal to investors
This is not just one building. It broadcasts a crystal-clear message to every domestic and foreign investor, every overseas Pakistani remitting money home, and every real-estate developer: your property rights are not secure. A regulator absent or complicit for three decades is now rewarded, while good-faith buyers and tenants are treated like squatters. Expect capital to demand 20–30% higher risk premiums — or simply flee. Real estate and construction (already 2–3% of GDP direct, 9–10% with multipliers in cement, steel, jobs and finance) will see investment flows freeze. The annual foregone development, jobs and tax revenue runs into tens of billions of PKR.
Any judge applying basic economics and rule-of-law principles would have placed the asset in professional receivership and auctioned development rights openly — preserving value instead of destroying it. Instead, we get judicial asset assassination. The real cost is not measured only in rupees tonight; it is measured in lost confidence for years to come.
Who will invest here? Who should when judges can destroy assets with the stroke of a pen.
