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What it actually is
Margalla Enclave is not a private housing society that went to the CDA for a no-objection certificate. It is a joint venture in which the CDA is a partner. Dawn, 11 February 2025 reported the commercial shape of it: CDA 55% / DHA 45% revenue share on roughly 10,000 kanal in the Kuri area. That structure is the project’s single strongest feature, and it is the reason the usual first question about an Islamabad scheme — does it have a NOC? — does not quite fit here.
The land sits in CDA Zone IV, on Jinnah Avenue, which older maps and older people still call Kuri Road. The neighbours are Bahria Enclave, Park View City, Park Enclave, Chak Shahzad and Bani Gala. Despite the name, the scheme is not up against the Margalla Hills; DHA’s own site says “at the foothills of Margalla Hills”, and the Pak-EPA assessment puts the site at 33°41′46.00″N, 73°10′40.58″E. Treat “Margalla” as an address, not a view.
The contradiction on DHA’s own homepage
This is worth seeing before anything else, because it tells you how to read every other claim about this project. On 9 September 2026, the official site’s hero banner said:
POSSESSION DELIVERED IN JUST 11 MONTHS
Scroll down the same page to question six of DHA’s own FAQ:
Is it a developed project or non-developed? — Under-development.
Both statements are DHA’s, on one page, on one day. They are not really in conflict: possession genuinely was handed over on selected streets of ME-2 on 21 May 2026, and the scheme as a whole genuinely is still under development. But a marketing line about eleven months and a one-word answer that says “under-development” will land very differently on a buyer who reads only one of them. Most sites reproduce the banner. This one reproduces both.
How big it is
The number almost nobody publishes is the denominator: how many plots exist in total. It comes from the Environmental Impact Assessment prepared for the DHA I-R and CDA joint venture and lodged with the Ministry of Climate Change — a 183-page document that no dealer site, property portal or news outlet appears to cite. Table 3.1 gives the breakdown.
| Category | Size | Plots |
|---|---|---|
| Residential 25′×45′ | 125 sq yd · 5 Marla | 1,709 |
| Residential 35′×65′ | ~250 sq yd · 10 Marla | 2,634 |
| Residential 50′×90′ | 500 sq yd · 1 Kanal | 2,647 |
| Apartment parcels | four footprint sizes | 128 |
| Commercial plots | ten footprint sizes | 388 |
| Petrol pumps, hotel plot, mega mall | special parcels | 4 |
| Residential total | 6,990 | |
| Grand total, all categories | 7,507 | |
Pak-EPA Environmental Impact Assessment, Margalla Enclave Project, Zone-IV Islamabad — prepared for the DHA I-R / CDA Joint Venture, hosted on environment.gov.pk. Open the PDF.
Keep that grand total in mind the next time you are told that only a handful of plots remain.
The masterplan against CDA’s own standards
The same assessment, Table 3.2, sets the scheme’s land use against the CDA’s published planning standards. Four lines comply. Two do not.
| Land use | Acres | Share | CDA standard | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Residential (plots, condominiums, parking) | 4,506.59 | 45.07% | 50% maximum | within |
| Commercial (plots and parking) | 604.11 | 6.04% | 5% maximum | plots alone 4.91% — at the cap |
| Public parking | 467.00 | 4.67% | 5% minimum | below the CDA minimum |
| Open and green (parks, nullah, lake) | 1,591.86 | 15.92% | 15% minimum | within |
| Existing graveyard | 15.78 | 0.16% | 2% minimum | below the CDA minimum |
| Roads | 2,814.66 | 28.15% | 23% minimum | within |
Pak-EPA Environmental Impact Assessment, Margalla Enclave Project, Zone-IV Islamabad — prepared for the DHA I-R / CDA Joint Venture, hosted on environment.gov.pk. Open the PDF.
Public parking comes in at 4.67% against a 5% minimum, and the existing graveyard at 0.16% against a 2% minimum. Neither is a scandal, and a graveyard allocation is a strange thing to hold a developer to in a scheme built around an existing village. But they are on the record, in the project’s own environmental filing, and a site that only printed the four compliant lines would be doing something other than informing you.
Timeline
15 Jan – 14 Feb 2025
First booking window
Opens for 5 & 10 Marla and 1 Kanal residential plus commercial, at launch prices with 15% down payment.
24 Feb 2025
First computerised balloting
Held at Jacaranda Family Club, DHA Phase-2. Roughly 47,000 applications were reported against 125, 250 and 500 sq yd plots.
Q4 2025
Second booking round opens
At revised prices roughly 30% above launch. DHA extended the deadline once, from 3 to 10 November 2025.
20 Nov 2025
Second balloting + digital commercial auction
Jinnah Convention Centre, 1:00 PM, covering blocks ME-1 to ME-4 and the Lake District. Results issued December 2025; down payment due 24 December 2025.
21 May 2026
First possession delivered
On selected streets of block ME-2. DHA’s own stage billed it “record-breaking possession in only 11 months” — a figure that reconciles with neither ballot date, so we carry it as DHA’s framing rather than as arithmetic. The delivered streets are real.
Aug – Sep 2026
Third ballot window
Application form dated 14 August 2026. The closing date repeated across dealer pages was 4 September 2026. See our ballot page for what is and is not confirmed on DHA’s own portal.
What went wrong along the way
18 January 2025 — Villagers’ protest over compensation and land records
Residents of Kurri and Raiyara/Rehara villages publicly protested, demanding a revised layout for the model village, a firm infrastructure timeline, compensation before CDA took possession, and correction of a land-record error — Raiyara recorded as 56 kanal against an actual 356 kanal. They threatened to block plot sales. The first ballot went ahead five weeks later. We found no follow-up reporting confirming how, or whether, the demands were settled.
Source: The News, 19 January 2025
February 2026 — The WWI memorial: a relocation, not a demolition
Claims circulated that a 1914 memorial to Subedar Ghulam Ali near Rehara village had been demolished for the project. A fact-check found it was moved roughly 100 to 200 metres with the consent of the family — an affidavit from his great-grandson — for reinstallation near the Northern Bypass. Worth knowing as an example of how fast a false claim about this project can travel.
The legal question, answered carefully
People search for “Margalla Enclave NOC” because they have been burned, or know someone who has. The honest answer has three parts.
First: the CDA is a partner in this scheme, not an external approver, so there is no NOC of the kind a private society would hold. Asking for one is asking the wrong question.
Second: we fetched CDA’s live register of illegal and unapproved housing schemes on 9 September 2026 and searched it. Not listed. The only similarly-named entry on the register is “Margalla Gardens, Lehtrar Road”, which is an unrelated scheme. The register is here. That is a real check on a live official list, and it is the strongest thing anyone can honestly say.
Third, and this is the part that matters: not appearing on a list of illegal schemes is not the same as an approval certificate, and none of it protects you from the ordinary risk, which is not the scheme — it is the person selling you a file. See the checks to run before you pay anyone.
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