KOHAT, March 11: Over 600 illegal occupants of Jarma land staged a demonstration on the Old Indus Highway here on Saturday in protest against the provincial government’s decision to use the land for a housing colony.

The demonstration was led by Jamaat-i-Islami district secretary-general Dr Tehseen and was participated by a number of councillors representing more than 65,000 residents, who have also constructed houses on the 9,000 acres of agriculture land owned by the government.

The land was originally leased out to an elder of the Banoori family by the British regime. The lease expired in 1971 and tribesmen and some locals occupied the land illegally. All residents have got their land transferred from the owners on simple stamp papers after the expiry of lease.

Addressing the protesters, Dr Tehseen, who is also nazim of the Jarma union council, said that their forefathers had bought the land and they would not leave it even if they were compensated.

He said that recently a delegation from the area met NWFP Chief Minister Mohammad Akram Durrani. He said the chief minister had promised to allot the land to its occupants but now the provincial government wanted to construct a colony on 250 acres of the land.

He said that late Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto had promised to allot the land to its residents, adding that the past successive governments had also stopped their eviction and promised to give property rights to the owners.

The protesters urged the government to construct the proposed colony on a barren land near the tunnel on the main Indus Highway. They said the chief minister should honour his promise of allotting the land to them.

Earlier, the provincial chief secretary told the residents that under no law they could use the agriculture land for residential purposes. Grandson of the leasee last month moved the Peshawar High Court, seeking vacation of his family land. He claimed that they were still the real owners.

The price of total agriculture land is estimated to be over Rs3 billion if auctioned in the open market.

The land was leased out by the British rulers to Mian Badshah of the Banoori family in 1886 for his services in negotiating a peace deal with the Afridi tribe of Darra Adam Khel. From 1953 to 1973, the land was leased out 14 times. But after that agreements were not renewed with the land grabbers.The actual owner of the land is in possession of 1,369 acres and seven kanals of property but most of it had been occupied by the tribesmen.

From 1979 to 1983, police had registered 49 cases against the land grabbers. These cases were sent to the then governor Fazle Haq in 1986. He constituted a committee which offered the occupants to buy it at the rate of Rs35,000 per kanal for agriculture purposes and Rs5,000 per kanal for residential purposes. But the occupants had refused the offer and demanded that the rate should be Rs1000 per kanal.

A committee, comprising the provincial education minister, Board of Revenue member, district collector and a secretary, had opposed the recommendations of an earlier committee for leasing out the whole land.

The committee also apprehended that if such a deal was struck with Jarma land owners, the government would have to sell its millions of acres of land on lease in other districts too.

Another committee recommended that the whole land should be leased out to the occupants at the market rate after the recovery of dues outstanding against them since 1973.