PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court has adjourned the hearing into a petition challenging a 50-year-old notification of the provincial government declaring Chitral region’s all mountains, wastelands, jungles, pastures and riverbeds as its property.

A bench consisting of Justice Wiqar Ahmad and Justice Dr Khurshid Iqbal fixed May 12 for next hearing into the plea, directing the relevant parties to argue the matter on that date.

The petition, jointly filed by over 100 Chitral residents, requested the court to strike a 1975 notification down, arguing that if the notification stays put, the government will proceed to declare over 95 per cent area of Upper and Lower Chitral districts as its property.

Counsel for the petitioners Barrister Asadul Mulk argued that in reliance on the notification, the title of 97 per cent of Chitral’s landmass had been entered in the name of the provincial government during the land settlement process, which was under way in Chitral.

Asks counsel to argue matter on May 12

He pointed out that the case was partly heard, so he was ready to resume arguments.

The lawyer said that he had already filed his written response to the legal questions formulated by the court on Dec 4, 2024.

Additional advocate general Asad Jan Durrani, representing the provincial government, requested the court for adjournment on the ground that the case had been marked to another law officer who was busy with cases pending with the Supreme Court.

Mr Mulk said that Chitral was a princely state before it acceded to Pakistan as a federated state in 1948 and was merged with the West Pakistan in 1969.

He added that in 1975, the government of NWFP (now KP) issued the impugned notification, which was being enforced for the first time and had the potential to deprive hundreds of thousands of Chitral people of their properties.

The high court had formulated questions in Dec last year. It asked whether the mandate of land dispute inquiry commission for Chitral also included determination of right of ownership of common people of Chitral in the immovable properties in Chitral and whether Chitral residents had the right of property ownership before the merger of Chitral by the way of West Pakistan Regulation I of 1969, the Dir Chitral and Swat (Administration) Regulation, 1969.

The case was originally instituted in 2019 in Darul Qaza Swat but was transferred to the principal seat of the Peshawar High Court by the then Chief Justice Qaisar Rasheed Khan in view of the gravity of the case and the stakes involved for both sides.

Mr Mulk said that the government had been seeking an adjournment in the case since 2019 on one pretext or the other.

In 2022, the high court granted interim relief to the petitioners directing the provincial government to continue with the land settlement process but not to make a final decision until further orders.

The petitioners, including former MNA Shahzada Iftikharuddin, former MPA Ghulam Mohammad and others, claimed they represented the region’s entire population.

They requested the court to order a halt to the land settlement exercise over the “sequestration of their private or collective properties.”

The petitioners insisted that less than three per cent of Upper and Lower Chitral districts consisted of arable land, so if the 1975 notification was allowed to stand, the people of Chitral were at risk of being deprived of their ancestral property and reduced to non-entities.

Published in Dawn, April 20th, 2025