Filing a Civil Miscellaneous Application (CMA) in land grabbing case of Mangove Delta of Malir River in DHA, Karachi on Wednesday, Transparency International (TI) Pakistan urged the Supreme Court to issue directives to Sindh Chief Minister to cancel all the illegal land allotments in the province. A three-member bench led by Justice Mian Saqib Nisar and comprising Justice Azmat Saeed Sheikh and Justice Qazi Faez Isa will take up the identical human rights cases regarding land grabbing in the province.
Hashmat Ali Habib filed the application of the TI adviser Syed Adil Gillani to place documents in record for consideration and appropriate orders in the matter. It is worth mentioning that the TI has already pointed out to the Supreme Court about illegal allotment of 530 acres of Malir River land, 300 acres of Clifton Beach, 5222 acres in Thatta and 100 acres in Noriabad last year.
The CMA stated the land mafias in Karachi in connivance with the public office holders are involved in illegally allotments of land by showing forged documents and illegal notifications for the last 20 years. When the TI had informed the Supreme Court about the allotments the Sindh government cancelled these and other allotments, which are about 40,000 acres. However, the Sindh Chief Minister on the summary of September 19, 2015 of Secretary Land Status Sindh withdrew the notifications of cancellation.
Gillani submitted that the Chief Minister Sindh also approved a summary regarding conversion of existing a 30-year lease granted for poultry, agriculture or cattle farming into a 99-year lease for industrial purposes on an application of November 24, 2010. He further said that government land cannot be given in exchange of private land for non-agricultural use, adding the amendment in Section 17 was introduced in 1995 to prohibit the transfer of valuable government land to the private persons in the garb of exchange.
He said the Land Utilisation Department has examined the issue and proposed that such allotments be cancelled/withdrawn/deleted to protect the precious government land. Similarly, all the orders of the district commissioners of district officers regarding allotment of state land in exchange, even with the approval of committee of commissioner or EDO (Revenue), be withdrawn and land be retrieved.
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