A landowner in the federal capital has moved the court over the alleged grabbing of his land, environmental degradation, violating zoning regulations and by-laws while carrying out illegal construction carried out in the protected shamlat-e-deh areas of Shahdara in the federal capital in connivance with relevant officers.
According to legal experts, around the cultivated land owned by the original founding families of a village, there could be huge tracts of waste land called “Shamlat” land, collectively owned by the village owners over which they would have a right either to reclaim the land themselves or allow others also to do so.
In the petition filed by Shahdara resident Javed Abbasi under Article 199 of the Constitution, he told the Islamabad High Court (IHC) that he inherited around 25,896 kanals of shamat land in Shahdara and Bhara Kahu areas of Islamabad, within Zone-III. However, he claimed that his land has been grabbed by private entities in connivance with revenue officials through fraud and misrepresentation of more than 200 forged and bogus attested mutations.
He added that the land falls under the national park and shamlat land where no kind of construction or alteration can take place. Moreover, he said that land comprising of a Shamlat-e-Deh cannot be broken up for cultivation or for any other purpose which is not envisaged by Wajib-ul-Arz under the Constitution without government permission.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 16th, 2020.
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