Revenue offices reopen after talks with lawyers

Lockdown had been imposed over relocation away from courts

DIJKOT:

Several revenue and property registration offices in the city have reopened after a two-and-a-half-month lockdown imposed by local lawyers in protest against the shifting of government offices from the district courts to surrounding areas to facilitate public access.

The deputy commissioner had issued a notification regarding shifting the offices of the additional deputy commissioner for revenue, Naib Tehsildar, colony branch, litigation cell, Nazarat, general revenue assistant, head registration clerk, diary branch, settlement branch, record room, copy branch and the superintendent to locations adjacent to government offices.

However, the legal community had raised objections over the decision due to inconvenience in travelling between government offices and revenue courts.

The district administration initially held negotiations with leaders of the district bar association (DBA) to settle the matter, but to no avail.

The DBA observed a strike to press its demands, following which young lawyers locked the offices indefinitely, leaving the people seeking property registration and land mutation in the lurch.

DBA Secretary Rana Babar Khan said the lawyers dealing with property registration cases had a lot of reservations regarding the shifting of the registry branch and had demanded reopening of the registration offices till the construction of an e-registration complex, withdrawal of unjustified taxes on property transfer and facilitating the citizens who had to go to several offices for their work.

He said the district administration had now accepted the demands and the bar association had decided in a meeting to call off the strike.

Additional DC Noman Afzal said in reply to a question that then government had suffered a loss of millions of rupees because of the lockdown, but the department would do its best to achieve the revenue targets set by the Punjab government.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 18^th, 2023.