LAHORE: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has expressed deep concern over the continued marginalisation of indigenous communities in Cholistan and called on the government and state institutions to reform its land allotment policy.

HRCP, based on the findings of a fact-finding mission to the region in October 2024, said it found disturbing patterns of land appropriation, suppression of civic rights, and the expansion of corporate farming at the expense of local livelihoods and ecological sustainability.

The commission said that residents across the region reported that fertile land and traditional grazing areas were being systematically appropriated, leaving livestock farmers and local communities without viable alternatives. It said that although the Punjab government announced a land allotment scheme in 2010, balloting was not carried out until 2023, naming nearly 26,000 Cholistanis as beneficiaries.

It said that its findings suggested that the relief was problematic in design and implementation, failing to address long-standing structural issues as well as the idea that such schemes should be limited to local communities.

It said that most locals complained that they had been allotted barren land and had not yet received official allotment letters, while non-locals receiving leases for fully or partially cultivable land under the same scheme.

The commission called the expansion of corporate farming to include the army’s formal entry into the sector in February 2023 alarming. It said that under a joint venture agreement signed with the Punjab government in March 2023, a 20-year lease (extendable by 10 years) was granted on a profit-sharing basis.

A Lahore High Court ruling in May 2023 that stopped the transfer of land to the army for corporate farming was overturned in July 2023, enabling land transfers under the Green Initiative Pakistan, overseen by the Special Investment Facilitation Council.

HRCP said its mission also received reports of forced displacement by powerful state institutions. Locals further reported that only non-locals appeared to be benefiting from these ventures, underscoring growing social and economic exclusion in the region, it added.

It said, “Equally troubling are reports that residents who attempted to peacefully protest in 2023 were allegedly denied permission by the district administration, raising serious concerns about violations of the constitutional right to peaceful assembly”.

HRCP called on the federal and Punjab governments, the Cholistan Development Authority, and all state institutions concerned to institute urgent reforms to ensure transparent, equitable, and rights-based land allotment; end all illegal land occupation, regardless of the identity or influence of those involved; uphold the rule of law by ending all forms of coercion or intimidation against dissenting residents; and ensure that corporate farming initiatives do not come at the cost of human rights or environmental degradation.

These reforms must also protect the rights of minorities and ensure that women and transgender persons can access and benefit from land policies equally, it added.

Published in Dawn, May 17th, 2025