ISLAMABAD, May 1: The Supreme Court on Wednesday decided a dispute that began 53 years ago but both the original litigants have died.

A Supreme Court bench comprising Justice Munir A. Sheikh and Justice Falak Sher decided the dispute concerning an evacuee industrial site in Mandi Dhaban Singh, Sheikhupura district.

The Kapoor family had established Kapoor Cotton Mills over 36 kanals in the 1940s. After the partition, the owners abandoned the mills and left for India. The plot was allotted as an urban industrial site in November 1950 to Mian Abdul Majeed, who had migrated from Ludhiana.

As per the record before the Supreme Court, possession of the land was handed over to Abdul Majeed in January 1951 by the settlement department.

He was constructing a factory on the plot but the officials concerned allegedly tampered with the record and the land was described as “agricultural” and allotted to Mohammad Yunas and others against their agricultural units.

Suits were filed before the civil judge in Sheikhupura. When these were decided, appeals were preferred before the district judge. Each party vigorously contested the entitlement of the other before the settlement authorities at different levels, culminating in writ petitions before the LHC filed in 1978.

The writ petitions were remanded to the settlement authorities for fresh adjudication over whether the property was urban or agricultural.

The concerned settlement commissioner decided that the land was urban. He concluded that it had been fraudulently declared agricultural.

He recommended action against the officials concerned and ordered that the land be transferred to Mr Majeed. Yunas and others approached the high court. In October 1995, the LHC rejected the petitions.

Yunus, his associates and family members filed petitions in the Supreme Court contending that the land was agricultural. The Supreme Court rejected the petitions in June 1996.

When Mr Majeed approached the Board of Revenue for the implementation of the orders, Chief Settlement Commissioner Manu Chehr wrote that it was not clear about the nature of the property. He said the department should seek a clarification from the court. The department did not file any such application.

Mian Majeed filed a contempt petition in the Supreme Court. The petition was taken up in 1999 and the chief settlement commissioner was given two months to implement the order.

Board of Revenue Member Ijaz Khan as the chief settlement commissioner declared that the order of the department passed in June 1986 in favour of Mian Majeed was illegal and void.

Mian Majeed’s side filed a fresh contempt application, which was heard on Wednesday.

The counsel for the department, Ahemd Avais, asserted that the order of 1986 lacked jurisdiction.

Mian Majeed’s counsel, Aitzaz Ahsan, submitted that the department had not agitated against the order in any court for the last 17 years and had not filed any petition against it.

He said the resistance by the department to implementation of orders of the Supreme Court was motivated by a “Qabza group”.

The court observed that the department was flagrantly violating the law and its orders.

It directed that the entitlement of the late Mian Majeed could not be disputed. It directed the chief settlement commissioner to determine the price at which the property must be transferred to his heirs.