MULTAN, June 23: Tenants of Peerowal farms of the Punjab Seed Corporation have decided to challenge before a court of law the June 7 directive of the Punjab governor requiring that the state land tenants accept the status of lessees.

Advocate Rashid Rahman, the counsel for the tenants and Multan task force coordinator of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, told Dawn the governor’s directive was in total violation of fundamental rights, the Tenancy Act and the law of contract. He said the governor’s order could not be treated as law.

Change the status of tenant to a lessee, he said, required due process of law. The government, he said, would have to prove that the tenant was not using the land for agricultural purposes, causing the productivity of the land to diminish or had been declared a defaulter by the Board of Revenue.

Moreover, he said, a new contract could not be signed without the consent of all the stockholders merely on a directive from the governor’s secretariat.

The Peerowal tenants, who are seeking ownership, did not share the wheat produce this year with the PSC and the British Cotton Growing Association. They have sown cotton on more than 7,000 acres in Chaks 86, 75, 87, 83, 85, 82 and 81 (10-Rs). On Wednesday they offered to share the wheat crop with the government through the Revenue Department.

The batai (division of produce) is underway on the basis of 15 maunds per acre yield. The government is receiving 4.5 maunds per acre as harvesting and thrashing expenses. The rest is being equally divided between the tenants and the government in the light of Revenue Department record which recognises the PSC cultivators at Peerowal as tenants-at-will.