KARACHI: Revenue and Relief Minister Makhdoom Mehboob Zaman on Friday told the Sindh Assembly that a summary for increasing the valuation rates of immoveable urban and rural property in the province had been sent to the chief minister.

While furnishing a statement and replying to the lawmakers’ written and verbal queries during the Question Hour session in the provincial assembly, he said that the valuation rates of different non-agriculture immoveable properties such as residential, commercial, industrial and built-in were fixed according to their respective status.

Replying to a question asked by Grand Democratic Alliance’s member Arif Mustafa Jatoi, the minister said that value of urban (non-agriculture) immoveable property and rural (agriculture) property was notified under Section 27-A of the Stamp Act, 1899 and the last revision of the rates was made on June 6, 2016.

He said that the value of rural (agriculture) immoveable property was Rs500 per Produce Index Unit (PIU).

Replying to a supplementary question raised by Mr Jatoi as to why the property rates were not revised for the past three years, he said that there was no clear-cut policy for revision of rates under the existing rules. “A summary has been moved to the chief minister for increase in property valuation rates,” he said.

Mr Jatoi said that rates of different produce had not been increased for the past five years adding to sufferings of small growers.

He asked the minister if farmers would be given any relief in tax. Makhdoom Zaman replied that the provincial government would soon introduce a relief scheme.

Responding to a question asked by opposition member Arsalan Taj Hussain, the minister said over 55,761 square kilometres land under the Board of Revenue had been digitised under a project — Land Adminis­tration & Revenue Management Information System (LARMIS).

When asked by Khurram Sher Zaman of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf to give details of the project, the minister said that the project was launched in 2012 with the objective of improving and modernising system of maintaining of land records in the province.

He said that the computerisation of land record was aimed at improving public accessibility to land records by simplifying procedures.

The minister said that almost 80 per cent of land record had been computerised.

Replying to a question raised by GDA’s member Nusrat Sehar Abbasi, the minister said that no appointment or recruitment was made in the revenue and relief department in the past five years and 348 candidates were appointed under officially approved deceased quota policy.

Published in Dawn, April 20th, 2019