MULTAN, July 6: Tenants of the Punjab Seed Corporation’s Peerowal farms in Khanewal on Saturday held captive two government officials and took into custody their tractors during the government’s operation to vacate land.

Reports said the police, during the last 24 hours, rounded up four tenants’ leaders Mehr Ameer, Hafeezullah Niazi, Faqir Muhammad and Khan Muhammad Thaheem while a number of tenants were missing.

Officials of the PSC, along with a police contingent, arrived in Chak 87 to uproot the self-sown cotton of tenants through ploughing by tractors. Over this, the tenants and their families from all the seven chaks 75, 86, 87, 83, 85, 82 and 81 (10-Rs) of the Peerowal farms rushed to the piece of land where the police and the PSC came to raze the crop.

Carrying clubs and sticks, the tenants overpowered the PSC staff driving tractors on the fields and took into custody the two tractors. The police resorted to mild baton-charge but immediately retreated.

The tenants, according to the reports, had refused to release the PSC officials until the release of their leaders.

Talking to Dawn, Peerowal tenants’ leader Dr Christopher John condemned the seed corporation’s efforts to destroy cotton sown by the tenants. He alleged it was the violation of the Lahore High Court’s order through which the tenants had been granted status quo against any government action.

Dr Christopher said the Anjuman-i-Mazareen was filing a contempt of court petition against the Punjab government, PSC and the police. He said the tenants would thwart any effort to dislodge them from the lands they had been cultivating for decades.

The hostage tractor drivers are identified as Muhammad Afzal and Samuel Fasih. A tenants’ spokesman claimed at least eight people from their side had been arrested. The tenants of Peerowal farms, sprawling over 7,000 acres, launched a struggle for ownership rights on their tenancy lands and 20 other state-managed agricultural farms in the Punjab.

A People’s Rights’ Movement spokesman Asim Sajjad told Dawn from Islamabad that an emergent meeting of all the tenants’ associations of the Punjab had been called at Okara military farms on July 7 (Sunday) to chalk out further strategy amid growing government pressures.

TRANSFERRED: The Punjab Seed Corporation management has transferred its Khanewal farms Director Muhammad Aslam Nasir and posted him processing director at its headquarters in Lahore, a press release stated on Saturday.