HYDERABAD, April 15: The Sindh Chamber of Agriculture (SCA) cautioned on Sunday that if the government seized people’s land under the Sindh Land Reforms Amendment Bill 2005 without paying compensation the chamber would not accept what it called the ‘illegal and unconstitutional exercise’.

A meeting of the chamber chaired by Syed Qamaruzzaman Shah said that the chamber's representatives Akhund Ghulam Mohammad Siddiqui and Anwar Bachani had expressed apprehensions on the proposed promulgation of the bill in a meeting with the chief land commissioner of Sindh.

The meeting objected to a proposal in the bill for fixing land holding limit at 100 acres and said that it was against the canons of justice.

In 1977, late Z. A. Bhutto had distributed lands but the Federal Shariat Court had later given a judgment that under Sharia law personal property of an individual could not be taken away, the meeting said.

Following the decision people were given to understand that they were entitled to possess as much land as they wished and kept purchasing more land but the present rulers wanted to deprive them of what was legally theirs, the meeting said

The meeting made it clear that the owners would part with their property on condition that the government was prepared to pay them in accordance with the current market value of land.

The meeting criticised the introduction of water rotation programme in Tando Allahyar despite the fact that water was available in the Phulelli Canal in ample quantity and demanded an end to the programme.

The meeting expressed profound sorrow over the sad demise of former Sindh chief minister Syed Abdullah Shah and offered fateha. Akhund Ghulam Mohammad Siddiqui, Agha Nasrullah, Anwar Bachani and Shahzad Shah also attended the meeting.