IT is another significant milestone in the annals of litigation involving land — specifically, the wholesale handing over of state land to influential quarters through shady means, demonstrating utter disregard for the rule of law. The Lahore High Court on Wednesday struck down a decision by Punjab’s caretaker government to give 45,267 acres of land in the province to the army on a 20-year lease. The transfer would have been the first ‘instalment’ of the one million acres the army wanted to acquire in the province for corporate agriculture farming. The plan had been conceived under the PTI government in 2021 to address the challenge of food security, and the Punjab cabinet at the time had conditionally approved a Statement of Conditions. However, the notification transferring the 45,000-plus acres was issued not by the elected provincial cabinet but by the caretaker dispensation last year. Not only that, the earlier agreed upon SOC was substantially revised, expanding the scope of activities and making the process non-transparent, thereby giving undue advantage to one party in the agreement. The verdict rightly denounces the caretaker set-up for having acted with “undue haste and [in] abhorrent … fashion” to approve the transaction.

The judgement stresses the question of mandate, and trenchantly notes that both the caretaker government and the army had exceeded theirs. It asserts that the army’s primary responsibility is to defend Pakistan and protect its people “without being involved in any kind of political, social or economic divide which may erode its professional capability, neutrality, prestige and pride”. A number of recent judgements by the superior courts have prohibited the security forces from engaging in commercial activity on land allotted to them for defence-related purposes, or even otherwise. In January 2019, the Supreme Court banned all commercial activities on military lands in Karachi, with a two-judge bench asking why the armed forces were running wedding halls and cinemas. Last year, the Islamabad High Court ordered that the Pakistan Navy’s sailing club and farmhouses be demolished, deeming them to have been illegally constructed on national park land. Unfortunately, these landmark verdicts have not been heeded. None of these ventures would have been possible without the collaboration of governing authorities. Neither side seems to have any interest in the equitable distribution of resources, nor any respect for its duty to the people.

Published in Dawn, June 24th, 2023