Watchdog hauls up government over church land given to shops

Standing committee believes board of revenue officials forged the church’s record of rights.

KARACHI:

A watchdog committee has taken the Board of Revenue to task over shops and markets that sprung up on land belonging to St Andrew’s Church in Saddar after the paperwork was changed.

“The [land] record has been changed under [pressure of] political influence and rights were illegally transferred with the help of Board of Revenue officials,” says a report prepared by the Sindh Assembly’s standing committee that keeps an eye on the matters of the Board of Revenue. “Hence, some changes were also made in the record of the rights documents.”

The committee, headed by MPA Fida Hussain Dero, had asked officials to produce the original paperwork. But none of the revenue officials showed up at any of the meetings, something that the committee decided pointed towards their involvement in forgery and record tampering.

The shops on church land were initially brought up by MPA Saleem Khursheed Khokhar in the Sindh Assembly. The matter was referred to the standing committee. It specially invited MPA Syed Sardar Ahmed to comment as he held the post of the chief secretary of Sindh when the church’s record of rights was decided.

MPA Syed Sardar Ahmed told the committee that the land was allocated for the church before 1947 (Partition) with a certain condition regarding the record of rights. “It was mentioned in the documents that the land allotted to the church and the adjacent land cannot be used for commercial purposes,” he said. After the original records were scrutinised, it was decided that the record of rights cannot be transferred or changed.  Even during the Pakistan Peoples Party’s tenure in 1978, some people approached the government to change the church’s record of rights, but the then minister in power, Piyar Ali Allani, turned down the request. The matter was taken up again during Gen Ziaul Haq’s regime, but it did not go through even then.

MPA Sardar Ahmed had suggested that the Saddar Town DDO and BoR officials be summoned to shed light on the matter. “I have copies of the record. We can match them with the present record [with the BoR].” The committee will be able to reach a conclusion then, he added.

On his assessment of the matter, MPA Fida Dero told The Express Tribune that the record of rights could not have been changed to allow the shops “without the help of revenue officials”.

“We have to submit a report at the next assembly session on the church’s land. We have to expose the [people] behind the manipulation.”

He had told the Sindh Assembly’s secretary to convey the committee’s reservations to not only the administrative head of the BoR, but also to Revenue Minister Jam Mehtab Dahar as well. The assembly’s additional secretary informed the standing committee that the BoR had been informed well before time and they did not know why official failed to show up for the meetings.

For their part, Bishop Dr Ijaz Inayat said a mafia in the guise of builders has been taking over the properties of churches by changing their record of rights.

“We have challenged their claims and dozens of them are pending in court,” he said. “We hope that Christians living in Karachi will hear good news soon when the inaccurate record of the church’s land is corrected.”

Published in The Express Tribune, April 6^th,  2011.