LAHORE: The Punjab Assembly Special Committee No 6 has summoned the entire Committee of Management of the Gymkhana Club – including senior members like Kamran Lashari and Salman Siddique – to appear personally on Oct 21 to answer questions regarding land use, lease compliance, building approvals, and public grants.

According to notices issued by Assembly Secretary General Chaudhry Amer Habib, the special committee convened by MPA Sami Ullah Khan is `intensifying’its probe into long-standing controversies surrounding the club’s occupation of government land. The panel is set to scrutinise an array of contentious issues during its upcoming sessions on Oct 20 and 21, including Adjournment Motion No 195/2024, Resolution No 288 moved by Amjad Ali Javed, and Privilege Motion 55/2025 by Chaudhry Iftikhar Hussain Chhachhar.

The parliamentary body has placed heavy demands on both top-tier provincial bureaucrats and club leadership to produce exhaustive records. Key administrative figures – including the Senior Member of the Board of Revenue (BoR), the Deputy Commissioner of Lahore, the Law Secretary, the Agriculture Secretary, the DG PHA, and the DG Audit (Punjab) -- have been directed to submit comprehensive written responses and supporting documents.

Among the primary focal points of the inquiry are:

The BoR and the Law Department must explain the legal foundation behind a 50-year lease term pegged at a nominal Rs5,000 annually, alongside the BoR’s exclusion of the club from a broader May 2023 notification.

The Lahore DC has been ordered to present a certified reconciliation of revenue records against actual possession, specifically targeting measurement discrepancies, Khasra 2108, and a reported excess of 3 kanals and 16 marlas involving Khasras 2100 and 2107.

Authorities are investigating unapproved structures dating back decades, adherence to prior-approval building conditions, and whether the club’s premises --disclosed by management as never commercial -- truly serve public access and interests.

The Director General Audit (Punjab) is required to present findings concerning four special government grants totalling Rs64 million received by the club, alongside unverified expenditures and rental concession values.

The Lahore Gymkhana’s management committee featuring notable figures such as Dr Ali Razzaque, Mian Misbah ur Rehman, Wajid Aziz Khan, Sardar Ahmad Nawaz Sukhera, Sarmad Nadeem, Dr Jawad Sajid Khan, Tasneem Noorani, Mian Parvez Bhandara, M Zia-ur-Rehman, and Samaira Nazir have been formally instructed to bring authenticated copies of lease deeds, registration documents, audited accounts for the last five financial years, fee schedules, and membership criteria.

The committee is expected to weigh departmental observations and formulate definitive findings and recommendations in the public interest following the hearings.

Documents before the committee show the club holds about 1,090 kanals, roughly 112 acres, on the Mall. The lease was renewed in 1996, four years early, for 50 years at Rs5,000 a year. That works out to about Rs44 an acre.

The Board of Revenue’s assessment values comparable land at Rs70m to Rs200m a kanal. That puts the holding between Rs76 billion and Rs218bn.

The 1996 deed binds the club to “provide facilities in Public Sector”. Yet membership is reserved for civil servants of grade 18 and above and for armed forces officers, “at minimal entrance fee”. The club’s buildings went up between 1972 and 2012, and the Board of Revenue says it has “no record” of the government approval each one required.

The club also holds six acres of Bagh-e-Jinnah for a cricket ground, at Rs900 a year, on a lease running until 2069.

Resolution No 288 moved by Amjad Ali Javed and Rao Kashif Rahim Khan asks the government to turn 100 acres into a public park and urban forest, leaving 17 acres to the club.

It also asks for the Bagh-e-Jinnah ground to be opened to public sport and for past dues to be recovered, and it cites the city’s smog.

This summer, New Delhi ordered the Delhi Gymkhana Club to vacate its land by June 5. The club was founded in 1913, the same year as Lahore’s. The order invoked a single public purpose clause in the lease, and the land and buildings return to the state.

Lahore’s lease carries the same power.

The Law Department has confirmed to the committee that the government may end the lease on six months’ notice, with no compensation for the buildings. No notice has been issued.

For want of land, public institutions have been pushed to the city’s fringe. The Pakistan Kidney and Liver Institute, the province’s flagship public transplant hospital, was built at Barki on Lahore’s outskirts. Meanwhile, 112 acres of state land in the heart of the city hold a golf course and a members’ club.

Published in Dawn, October 17th, 2026