Land acquisition: Govt grilled for ‘robbing’ citizens of properties

Justice Khan says he will jail those who have ‘unlawfully’ demolished petitioner’s property

LAHORE: “The government is taking away citizens’ properties as if they have no rights,” Justice Khalid Mahmood Khan of Lahore High Court remarked on Thursday.

He was heading a division bench that heard a petition by Abdul Hafeez, a resident of Faisalabad.

The petitioner submitted that former Faisalabad DCO Nasim Sadiq had demolished his property over 13,000 square feet on Faisalabad-Jhang Road to widen the road in violation of a restraining order issued by a court.

The judge observed that the government was not treating citizens fairly. “I will send to jail those who violated the court order,” he said.

The judge asked an additional advocate general, “Can you see what they [the government] has been doing in Lahore?… it seems that the city is being destroyed.” He said the DCOs, tehsildars and patwaris appeared to have been handpicked for the job.

The judge said the government could demolish private properties only after paying compensations. “Once a petitioner informed me that when he handed a stay order to a government officer he told him that a bulldozer cannot read such orders,” Justice Khan said.

He said he would not tolerate violation of a court order.

Counsel for the district government sought time to submit documents to show that the petitioner had encroached on state land.

The petitioner submitted that in 1989, he had built a structure on 34,000 square feet on Faisalabad-Jhang Road. He said he had yielded a 28-foot stretch for the road. He said in 2011 the government had asked him to hand it the piece of land for the widening of a road.

The petitioner said that on January 28, 2012, he had challenged in court a notice issued by the government to vacate the land and the court had issued a restraining order. He said Nasim Sadiq and some others had later demolished the building and “taken away my valuables worth Rs20 million”. He said he had filed a petition which was dismissed by a single bench. He had then filed an intra-court appeal against that single bench’s order, requesting the court to order action against those who had demolished the building.

The judge ordered the respondents to present the documents until March 10.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 4^th, 2016.