LAHORE, Feb 17: The heirs of two Pakistan Movement workers are likely to be homeless after a week or so as they repaired the dilapidated premises they have been living in after partition.

The other sin of the descendents of Haji Ehsan Ali Qureshi and Anwar Ali Qureshi is that they have been actively taking part in protests against the Evacuee Trust Properties Board (ETPB).

Haji Ehsan had donated Rs130,000 to the All-India Muslim League in 1935 and was awarded a medal for the services he rendered during the independence movement. His brother Anwar Ali used to render Millat ka Pasban hai Muhammad Ali Jinnah at the public meeting before the speech of the Father of the Nation.

The families of the two Leaguers migrated from Hasaar to Lahore in 1947 and obtained a house on Lawrence Road at a rent of Rs7. In the mid-1960s, the Evacuee Trust Properties Board claimed it was their property and increased the rent.

It had been difficult for them to pay the rent, but the eight households of the extended families of the two Qureshis somehow managed to pay it on time as the increase had been at a rate of 30 per cent after every three years.

“But in March last year, the ETPB issued us a notice, directing us to deposit 5,000 times more from the following month at a rate of Rs2,000 per family,” said Ejaz Ali, Iftikhar Ali, Ishtiaq Ali and Nasim Begum who got eviction notices.

The reply submitted in response to the notice was dismissed, without giving a hearing to them and a notice was served on them on Friday, asking them to vacate the premises in a week for they “carried out massive construction works” there “without seeking prior permission from the competent authority.”

Since the takeover, the ETPB had not spent even a single paisa on the renovation of the place but increasing the rent, he said, and added: “We have been living there and we carried out repair works to make it safe. The present move of the ETPB is aimed at depriving us of the only shelter we have in Pakistan for which our ancestors did not hesitate to sacrifice even their lives,” they said while sitting among their three widow relatives and their nine children.

Meanwhile, ETPB tenants on Saturday sought moral and legal help from the Lahore Bar Association by holding a demonstration in front of the Board office at the Court Street.

Carrying a banner, inscribed with their appeal, the tenants remained there for over two hours and continued explaining to the lawyers who visited them. “We are not the only victims of the EPTB highhandedness. There are more than 7,500 helpless tenants, suffering at the hands of callous ETPB authorities who want to make them homeless on one pretext or the other and make money by commercialising the places in violation of the law.

Help and save us from another tragedy. We became homeless in 1947 and now the ETPB again wants us to be without a shelter.”