May 11, 2007	Friday	Rabi-us-Sani 23, 1428

BADIN, May 10: The Zarai Taraqqiati Bank on Thursday postponed for 11 days auction of 700 acres of agricultural land belonging to 25 farmers who had mortgaged their property to get loans, after angry protest by hundreds of land owners against the Talhar branch of the bank.

The bank planned to auction lands belonging to 400 defaulting land owners who owed it a total sum of Rs80 million received two-three years ago, and announced the first auction of 700 acres scheduled for Thursday.

The bank issued notices to the land owners warning them that if they failed to repay their lands would be liquidated through auction by May 9. The land owners on the one hand moved to Sindh chief minister who reportedly directed the district administration to get the auction put off while on the other continued protests against the bank authorities.

When recovery manager Siddique Kaimkhani arrived from Hyderabad in Talhar to hold auction he was practically stopped from doing so following strong protest by the land owners who in their hundreds staged a rally led by former district nazim Kamal Khan Chang.

The participants of the rally later surrounded the bank raising slogans against the government for not waiving off loans of abadgars belonging to Badin.

They said that Badin had been badly hit by natural calamities since last 30 years and the district had been declared calamity-hit 16 times but without any concessions on that account.

They accused the government of meting out step-motherly treatment to the district and said that the government gave Thatta district an agriculture package but completely neglected Badin.

The affected land owners have formed a 13-member committee headed by Kamal Khan Chang with Maulana Abdul Sattar, Haji Khan Lashari, Mir Atta Talpur, Nadir Khwaja and Allah Dino Shah as members to meet higher authorities and inform them of the situation.

The bank’s recovery manager told the protesting land owners that the bank would not show them any leniency until it received such orders from the higher authorities.