A Lahore High Court division bench restrained Border Area Committee (BAC) from snatching possession of agricultural land in border area of Kasur from its lawful owners on Tuesday.
The bench directed BAC to file detailed a reply and parawise comments in the court within two weeks on the matter.
In addition, the bench issued notice to the attorney general of Pakistan to assist the court in the proceedings on the matter in terms of article 199(4) read with order-A on challenging West Pakistan Border Area Regulations 1959 condition no 11and amended regulation 1981 that laid down the condition of obtaining an NOC from GHQ for transfer and purchase of land in 5 miles limit of border area.
The bench comprising Justice Ijazul Ahsan and Justice Sahid Saeed passed the order after hearing the arguments of Muhammad Azhar Siddique, counsel for petitioners, which contented that BAC cancelled the allotment of their agricultural land on the pretext that they did not possessed an NOC from GHQ in 1981 when they purchased the land from Naseem Khan, who was a lawful land owner. The counsel said that their clients had been farming on the land for the last 31 years without causing any trouble to border area authorities and they were not involved in any unlawful activity as well, which may be against the national interests regarding border area security.
Seeks reply on petition challenging deptt’s merger: LHC Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed on Tuesday sought reply from respondents until June 6 on a petition challenging merger of the Punjab Cooperative Board for Liquidation with the Punjab Cooperative Department.
The petition was filed by Syed Iqbal Jafree submitting that the alleged merger would lead to plundering and looting of Rs 100 billion assets of the board. The petitioner pointed out that in order to finalise the merger, authorities concerned had recently removed its chairman Nazar Chauhan and around 1,100 kanals of board land were illegally grabbed by a politician. He said that if the merger was completed, assets of the board would be doled out to cooperative societies causing a great loss to affectees, who have filed petitions for recovery of their money besides affecting the process of recovering Rs five billion through the board. Jafree requested the court to intervene and stop merger of the board otherwise all of its assets would be wasted. After hearing arguments, the court issued notice to respondents including the Punjab government, Punjab chief secretary, the federation and others.