LAND is back in the news once again, specifically public properties and state land to which public and elected officials claim an undue right. The so-called Bilawal House wall which has become a target of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s sole MNA from Karachi is emblematic of the problem, as is the demand by former chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry for a special land grant in Islamabad under a now discontinued special prime ministerial scheme. Start with the Bilawal House wall. While there is undoubtedly a severe and continuing security threat to former president Asif Ali Zardari and his children and the PTI has surely taken up the anti-wall cause with gusto in reaction to the PPP’s recent criticism of the party, this much is also clear: the wall, which stands some distance away from the Zardari residence, is unnecessary, unjustified and a severe disruption in a previously thriving commercial and residential area of Karachi. It exists only because there is absolutely no sense of proportionality or propriety among those who approved the wall and allowed both sides of a main thoroughfare to be closed to the public for years. It exists only because public properties and spaces are considered to be first and foremost for the private use of public representatives.

Then there is the request by former chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry to have a property in an upscale Islamabad neighbourhood allocated to him — four years after he had rejected the very same property. True, there is nothing illegal in simply making a request under the then applicable rules. But the problem is with the rule itself, introduced by Shaukat Aziz as prime minister in 2006, and generally rules that grant civil servants public land must be questioned. Why must any public official be entitled to state land on retirement? Often the properties in question are in some of the most expensive residential neighbourhoods in the country. Surely there is something very wrong with an incentives structure that instals decades-long servants of the state and the people among the propertied elite of the country once they have retired.

Of course, no debate on the unfair and unjust appropriation of state land can ever be complete without reference to the military and its property schemes that can be found across the country. The vast Defence Housing Authorities in particular are an egregious example of completely unjustified property investments that have spawned many a multimillionaire in the army while there is no real justification of the need for such projects. Across the board then, what is needed is a thorough re-examination and overhaul of the rules that entitle public and state officials to state land or the use of public properties, as well as an impartial and full enforcement of the new rules.