LAHORE: Punjab Human Rights and Minorities Affairs Minister Khalil Tahir Sandhu has said that legislation is on the cards in the Punjab Assembly to pass an act prohibiting the sale, purchase and transfer of church property by any person without NOC from the government.
He expressed these views, while talking to a delegation of lawyers, at his office on Sunday.
The minister said that Sindh has already passed the Sindh Protection of Communal Properties of Minorities Act 2013 and now Punjab Assembly is going to take this issue for promulgation.
Sandhu said that after the 18th Amendment the concurrent list in the constitution has been abolished and the power was conferred on the provinces to legislate on this pertinent issue.
He said that under the express provisions of the Protection of Communal Properties of Minorities Ordinance 2002, more particularly section-3 which is mandatory in its application and nature, categorically and strictly proscribes the sale, purchase and transfer of church property by any person without NOC from the Federal government.
The section-5 of the ordinance which states that whoever buys, sells or transfers any property belonging to a minority community meant for its communal use in violation of section 3, shall be punishable with imprisonment of either description which may extend to 7 years and shall also be liable to fine which shall not be less than 100,000/- rupees, and the sale or transaction shall be of no legal effect, the minister added.
Sandhu referred the instance of a recent incident wherein, he said, at Liaqatpur, Rahimyar Khan a self-appointed, fictitious and fraudulent body of locals, in a surreptitious and clandestine manner is involved in a suspicious transaction of prime 102 marlas of the local church on the basis of fictitious documents. The minister said that he has also written a letter to Punjab Law Minister Rana Sana Ullah Khan in this connection requesting him to initiate immediate legal and disciplinary action to bring the culprits to book whosoever involved in the commission of this offence keeping in view the above mentioned legal and factual position and the property be reverted back to its lawful owner which is the concerned church.
