LAHORE, July 20: The Lahore High Court on Tuesday suspended the operation of a gazette notification under which the Pakistan Rangers was authorized to purchase a vast tract for its housing society.

The Pakistan Rangers set up a cooperative housing society and applied to the government for the purchase of 300 acres at Sadhoki near Kahna Nau on the Ferozepur Road.

The government allowed the deal and issued a gazette notification on May 15 this year, which authorized the Pakistan Rangers' Cooperative Housing Society to acquire land on the official average sale price against a market price ranging up to Rs5 million an acre.

The notification was challenged by landlord Muhammad Muzaffar through a writ petition on the plea that his land was forming the bulk area of the housing society, which wanted to purchase it at a throwaway price. He said the market price of the land was much higher than the money the society was offering.

His counsel Muhammad Ramzan Chaudhry challenged the notification on the grounds that the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 allowed the acquisition of land only for public welfare schemes.

The society, he submitted, was set up by a particular class of the people who wanted to benefit another particular class. The housing scheme was in no way a public welfare project, he added.

Mr Chaudhry contended that the Land Housing Acquisition Act of 1973 stood repealed and no law existed on statute books to allow the acquisition of land for housing purposes.

Suspending the notification, Justice M Javed Buttar issued notices to the federal and provincial governments to respond to the questions raised in the petition. The counsel submitted that the society was not barred from purchasing land on a market price to launch a housing project as was being done by many other private housing schemes.