MULTAN, Oct 22: Governor Khalid Maqbool’s visit to Peerowal farms of the Punjab Seed Corporation in Khanewal on Tuesday ended in fiasco as the tenants refused to sign the lease deeds while he reportedly left the farms with a threat that “state is the supreme power and no one can stand against it.”

The visit was organized in the backdrop of promises made to the tenants by the Khanewal district government prior to the general election to withdraw the call for the boycott of the election.

Some 20,000 tenants of the seven villages of the Peerowal farms had announced boycott of the election in protest against highhandedness of the military regime to deny what Anjuman Mazareen Punjab claimed their right to own the lands after having cultivated them for nearly a century. The Seed Corporation, on the other hand, was pressing the tenants to sign lease contracts on yearly basis.

The Peerowal farms came under NA-157 (Khanewal-II) where Hamid Yar Hiraj, the brother of district Nazim Ahmad Yar, contested as an independent in the face of joint opposition by the PPP and the PML-N after he defected the PPP at the eleventh hour reportedly on official signals.

A few days before the election, the district Nazim, the DCO and the Khanewal DPO paid a visit to the villages of the Peerowal farms and informed the tenants about a ‘good news’ that the governor had agreed to award state lands adjoining the Peerowal farms to them on ownership basis while the farm land would also remain under their cultivation on the basis of lease. Aspiring for proprietary rights for decades, the tenants agreed to end their boycott of the election. They all voted Hamid Yar to the National Assembly.

A wave of jubilation spread as the governor’s visit was announced. The district government had organized a public meeting at Chak 87 where hundreds of tenants’ families, including women, children and elderly people, thronged to see the moments which their forefathers could not see.

But, to their utter disappointment, the governor announced only the ownership rights to their (tenants’) residential mud houses, that too, to those who would sign the lease with the corporation. He, however, was so generous to announce that the tenants would not be dislodged from the lands until the arrangement of alternative lands. No time frame for the ‘alternative’ lands was given to the tenants.

At this, the tenants stood up and chanted slogans malki ya maut (ownership or death) and started leaving the place. Unmoved of the public reaction, the governor asked the Khanewal district Nazim to explain the tenants that what the government was offering was in their favour.

He said he could put off the matter for the civilian government but his commitment did not allow him to do so. He made it clear that the Peerowal lands could be given in the ownership of tenants. But this would prove destructive for the agriculture sector.

“If we abandon the PSC farms, then we have to procure seed from enemy countries which will destroy our agriculture,” was the logic of the governor to refuse the tenants what they were demanding.

Later, talking to newsmen the governor reiterated “there will be no compromise on principle” while the tenants were chanting slogans.