Recently, an extraordinary episode unfolded in Pembrokeshire, Wales. Hundreds of Harry Potter fans protested when the planned route of the $581 million Greenlink energy interconnector between Wales and Ireland threatened the fictional grave of Dobby, an even fictional house-elf. Dobby dies heroically while saving Harry Potter and his friends from Malfoy Manor in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The project’s planners listened. The 200-kilometre power cable, linking Pembrokeshire with Wexford, Ireland, was rerouted to spare a memorial to a fictional character. The episode is revealing. A fictional grave commanding public sentiment altered the course of a major public project.

How starkly different is the lesson at home? Large-scale anti-encroachment drives by the CDA have left thousands of homes in Islamabad’s informal settlements reduced to rubble. Entire low-income communities of long-settled residents and laborers have been uprooted with little warning, displacing thousands whose modest homes represented years of work, savings, and precarious security.  

In the latest Bahria Town episode, after years of acquiescence, the CDA has suddenly issued notices to residents in some of its phases over alleged........

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