Sacred places: MPAs pass new law to protect properties important to minorities

Evacuee Trust Property Board’s properties will not be affected by the legislation.

KARACHI: Provincial legislators unanimously passed a law on Friday to protect properties of religious importance to Sindh’s minorities. 

According to the law, titled the ‘Sindh Protection of Communal Properties of Minorities Bill 2013’, no communal property of a minority group can be sold, purchased and transferred without obtaining an No Objection Certificate from the provincial government first. “Anybody violating the law shall be punishable with imprisonment of up to seven years,” states the law. The law does not apply to the property that comes under the Evacuee Trust Property Board.

Moving the private bill, minority MPA Saleem Khursheed Khokhar said the purpose of the law is to stop land mafia, which swindles people into selling, transferring and leasing properties salient to religious minorities by telling them that they are required for development schemes. “We [legislators] want this to stop this practice as it stops people from using the structures for what they were intended for,” he said. He announced that the government would evict land-grabbers from places of worship and burial sites. “It is a landmark achievement for me. The protection of minorities was the top priority in the Pakistan Peoples Party manifesto.”

Another minority MPA, Pitanbar Sewani, complained that another bill regarding forced conversion was supposed to be passed on Friday, but he alleged that the minorities ministry objected to it. “The law department had approved it, but unfortunately the minorities minister, who belongs to our own community, expressed his reservations, saying that the permission of the finance department was also needed because the bill also involves expenditure,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 16^th, 2013.