SC throws out military's claim
The Supreme Court has thrown out the claim of the military over the ownership of the Margalla National Park land.
In January 2022, the then Islamabad High Court Chief Justice, Athar Minallah, had also declared that the claim of the Remount, Veterinary and Farms Directorate of Pakistan Army, regarding 8,068 acres of land in the notified National Park area is in violation of the Ordinance of 1979 read with the Ordinance of 1960 and the Master Plan.
"The RV&F Directorate, QMG Branch, GHQ' [Remount, Veterinary and Farms Directorate, Quarter Master General Branch, General Headquarters of Pakistan Army) the Directorate is not a legal entity. The Directorate bypassed the Government of Pakistan and directly took up the matter with the CDA. It stated that through notification No.266 dated 23 April 1910 land was being 'utilized by Military Farm Rawalpindi for production of hay for Army animals.
"Permitting the use of land does not confer its ownership, nor could ownership have been conferred on the Directorate, a non-legal entity. It also escaped the attention of the personnel of the Directorate that the only concerned statutory entity was the Wildlife Board," says a 25-page detailed judgement authored by Chief Justice of Pakistan Qazi Faez Isa in the Monal restaurant lease case.
The judgement notes that the directorate and its director-general asserted rights to the land of the National Park on the tenuously improbable premise that in the year 1910 the Veterinary, Remount and Farms unit of the British Army was allowed to use some land of the National Park for fodder. Major General Muhammad Samrez Salik, was the Director-General of the Directorate, who had affixed his signature and official stamp on the RV&FD Lease, through which Luqman Ali Afzal (Monal restaurant's owner) was bestowed the favour of a seventeen year lease by the Directorate.
"The Federal Government was correct in disabusing Major General Muhammad Samrez Salik and the Directorate of their fanciful notion that a 110-year-old permission to collect fodder did not nor could bestow ownership rights to such land.
It said that the application was filed by the federal government wherein it stated in writing that the RV&FD Lease was void ab-initio', and that no record is available to show 'that the Federal Government has given any approval to execute the said Lease Agreement,' that is, the RV&FD Lease. However, Mr. Afzal continued to assert the purported rights of the Directorate"
CJP Isa noted that a lessee cannot unilaterally discard his lessor, substitute it with another and then become the lessee of the latter, but this is what Mr Afzal did. He unilaterally cast aside CDA, his Lessor, and the CDA Lease and elected to become the purported lessee of the Directorate under the RV&FD Lease. Mr Afzal had obtained the possession of the property from CDA pursuant to the CDA Lease and had agreed to pay rent to CDA, but then he stopped paying rent to CDA and had the temerity to seek the refund of the rent already paid to the CDA.
"Nonetheless, Mr. Afzal retained the possession of the property which he had got from CDA under the CDA Lease while he put up his untenable contention. Rarely such audaciousness, and complete disregard of the law has been witnessed," read the judgement.
"Afzal apparently cultivated and developed relationships with the powerful, and his brother was in the bureaucracy who then rose to the highest position in it. Therefore, he may have deluded himself in assuming that he was above the law. He violated the law for years and went on expanding his restaurant by encroaching into and destroying the National Park. The protected status of the National Park was of no consequence to him and to the government servants who supported him."
"Money, connections, influence and/or nepotism supplanted the law and the protected status of the National Park, first by getting CDA to execute the CDA Lease and then the Directorate to execute the FV&FD Lease. Every opportunity was given to Mr. Afzal to comply with the law, which he had been continuously flouting for eighteen years. Probably it finally dawned that this Court would ensure the law is abided by and that it would also ensure that the National Park is protected which made him and the other restaurant owners pause and reflect."
During the hearing of these cases and earlier too frequent fires had erupted in the National Park. The Court was informed that the cause of these fires could also be that Monal, La Montana and Gloria Jeans were popular venues and daily attracted thousands of customers and any of whom could carelessly throw a lit match or a cigarette, without first extinguishing it, which would ignite the dry grass and twigs lying on the forest floor of the National Park. These blazes are difficult to put out and require considerable manpower and resources.