MULTAN, Sept 5: The Anjuman Mazereen Punjab has condemned intimidatory tactics employed by the rangers and police to force tenants of state lands to give up their tenancy rights.

In a press statement issued here on Thursday, AMP chief Chaudhry Abdul Jabbar alleged that ‘law enforcers’ in Okara military farms were forcing the tenants at gunpoint to sign lease deeds for the period of one year only.

He said the authorities were putting pressure on the relatives of tenants who were in government service to get signed the officially drafted lease deed from them or face dismissal from their jobs.

The anjuman, he said, would file writs in courts against the highhandedness of government agencies to dislodge the tenants from lands they had been residing since their forefathers.

Jabbar said he was not optimistic that courts could force the authorities their (courts) orders. To support his assertion, he cited an example of Peerowal farms of the Punjab Seed Corporation in Khanewal district where the ‘law enforcers’ did not give up harassing the tenant families despite the orders of Multan bench of the LHC.

He appealed the international observers and right organizations to take note of the pressure and intimidation to tenants by government agencies.

The repeated announcements by Gen Pervez Musharraf and other government high-ups that landless tillers of the state lands would be awarded ownership rights had kindled light among tenants to struggle for proprietary rights against their tenancy lands, he said.

The AMP, he said, had firm belief that by signing the lease contracts the tenants of the state lands would be deprived of their tenancy status and rights altogether.

He reiterated the AMP stand that the government should negotiate with tenants through the actual owner of the state lands — the Punjab government — instead of rangers and police at pistol point.