Top court settles Ameer of Bahawalpur property case

Nawab Sadiq’s legal heirs will now be able to obtain their inheritance rights

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court’s five-judge bench, led by Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar, on Tuesday dismissed the Punjab government’s plea on the 52-year old litigation over the property of the late Ameer of Bahawalpur, Nawab Sadiq Muhammad Khan Abbasi.

The legal heirs of late Ameer of Bahawalpur – Iqbal Abbasi and others – were represented by Barrister Syed Ali Zafar and other counsels.

At the time of the partition, the Amir of Bahawalpur made his choice of merging the Bahawalpur State with Pakistan and executed an instrument of succession in pursuance of which a Bahawalpur Merger Agreement dated 17/12/1954 was executed between the Bahawalpur state and the Government of Pakistan.

The Nawab died and a dispute developed between his legal heirs and the Government of Pakistan regarding the inheritance, the applicability of the Shariat Law and MLR 64, which was then finally decided by the Supreme Court in the year 1982.

In this decision, the top court directed the government to determine the inheritance rights of the legal heirs and thereafter proceed under the provisions of the Land Reforms Procedures, 1959. However, the government failed to implement the judgement and instead the Punjab land commissioner, in exercise of suo motu powers, assumed the land.

This gave rise to further legal proceedings and the legal heirs filed a writ petition before the Lahore High Court, a division bench of which decided that the suo motu proceedings were illegal and the order of the Supreme Court must be implemented in letter and spirit.

However, the government of Punjab and the Punjab land commissioner filed an appeal against this order before the Supreme Court.

Barrister Zafar submitted a detailed, concise statement on behalf of the legal heirs. He said that the order of the Supreme Court is to be implemented in letter and spirit which means that the government must distribute the land to the legal heirs of the late Ameer of Bahawalpur and then apply the proceedings of MLR 64 in case of any excess land.

The federal government also submitted a concise statement stating that they have already divided the land among the inheritors but have not distributed it because of the suo motu proceedings of the Punjab land commissioner.

After hearing the arguments, the bench noted that there is no illegality in the order of the Lahore High Court and that the earlier judgement of the Supreme Court has to be implemented.

As a result, the legal heirs would finally be able to now obtain their lawful rights after many years of litigation.

It is learnt that the  in view of the Supreme Court order, the federal government had distributed the mutated and possessed private property, urban and agriculture land, measuring 4,455 acres  in view of 2005 notification among 23 legal heirs of the late Ameer Bahawalpur.