PESHAWAR: Peshawar High Court Chief Justice Qaiser Rahsid Khan on Monday ordered the transfer of a petition regarding the Chitral land settlement from the Swat bench (Darul Qaza) to the principle seat in Peshawar.

He accepted an application filed by Barrister Asadul Mulk on behalf of the petitionersseeking the case’s transfer from Swat to Peshawar.

The petitioners have challenged a notification issued over four decades ago declaring all mountains, wastelands, jungles, pastures and riverbeds of Chitral the property of the provincial government.

The lawyer said 97 per cent of the total land mass of Chitral region was registeredin the name of the provincial government that was unfathomable and contrary to the command of Article 172(1) of the Constitution.

Notification issued four decades ago for purpose was challenged in high court

He said it appeared that instead of land settlement, land expropriation was being carried out in Chitral.

The petitioners including formerMNA Chitral, Shahzada Iftikharuddin, former MPA from Chitral Ghulam Mohammad and several elders from Chitral also attended the hearing.

Chief Justice Qaisar Rashid read the grounds agitated in the transfer application and pronounced the acceptance of the application.

As regarding the interim relief of preventing the handing over of the revenue records by Chitral’s settlement office to the revenue authorities, the chief justice said the same would be placed before a divisional bench for hearing.

The mode and manner in which land settlement has been carried out in the districts of Upper and Lower Chitral is a bone of contention between the residents of the districts and the Government.

Barrister Mulk stated that there were several statutory and constitutional defects in the 1975 notification.

He said the 1975 Notification’s reconcilability with Article 171 of the Constitution, which deals with ownerless properties, was also questioned, as was its reconcilability with the report of the Land Dispute Inquiry Commission, constituted in 1970s.

It was submitted before the court that the petitioners were not opposed to land settlement in itself, rather they were opposed to any process which did not follow due process and trampled upon their proprietary rights.

The petitioners have requested the court to strike down the impugned notification stating that unless the notification is struck down by the High Court, the Government will proceed to declare over 95% of the area of the District of Upper and Lower Chitral as its property.

They said the districts of Upper and Lower Chitral previously formed the Princely State of Chitral. They stated that the State of Chitral together with the State of Dir and Swat remained autonomous princely states until 1969 when General Yahya Khan merged them into Pakistan.

Published in Dawn, April 20th, 2021