LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Monday suspended the order of the same court which had banned the transfer of land to the Pakistan Army on a 20-year lease for corporate farming.
The order came after a two-judge bench headed by Justice Ali Baqer Najafi heard the Punjab government’s plea seeking annulment of the judgment of the single-judge bench of the Lahore High Court.
The Punjab government maintained that the complainants – Lahore-based lawyers – were not aggrieved parties and noted that it was not the court’s job to regulate agricultural policies.
A single-member bench of the Lahore High Court, headed by Justice Abid Hussain Chatta, in June declared the illegal lease of land to the Pakistan Army for corporate farming illegal, saying that the armed forces had no constitutional right to engage in corporate farming. And there is no legal mandate.
Justice Chatha in the written judgment also said that the caretaker government of Punjab has no constitutional mandate to allot land for corporate farming.
The Punjab government had issued a notification for the allotment of 45,267 acres of Punjab land to the Army in three districts of Bhakkar, Khushab and Sahiwal for corporate agriculture farming projects.
The allotment came after the Pakistan Army’s Director General of Strategic Projects on February 8 wrote to the Board of Revenue in Punjab requesting up to 1 million acres of government land for “corporate agriculture farming” in Punjab. went
In a letter seen by JEE News, the Pakistani military termed rising oil and food prices as a serious challenge to Pakistan’s economy and its agricultural sector, saying it has experience in developing “wastelands”.
For the project, the Army proposed immediate release of 10,000 to 15,000 acres of irrigated land, followed by 100,000 acres by March 1 and the remaining 1 million acres by April.
A month later, the Governor of Punjab and the Pakistan Army signed a joint venture to lease up to 1 million acres of government land in Punjab to the Army for corporate agriculture farming for a period of 20 years.
The agreement also finalized the profit-sharing mechanism, under which 20 percent of the profit from the project would be used for research and development, while the remaining profit would be split 50-50 between the Punjab government and the army. will be divided between
In the judgment, the LHC calculated that the 1 million acres of land in the province was “about 2% of the total area of Punjab”.
But none of this information was made public, until an official notification circulated on social media on March 10 revealing that the Punjab government had transferred 45,267 acres of government land in Bhakkar, Khushab and Sahiwal to corporates. It has been decided to hand over the institutions to the army. Farming
Soon after the notification was made public, Lahore-based lawyers Fahad Malik and Rafi Alam, representing the NGO Public Interest Law Association of Pakistan, challenged the government’s decision in the Lahore High Court. Application filed.
They argued that the provision of land by the caretaker government was “unconstitutional and illegal”, as the caretaker government’s scope was limited to day-to-day operations, and that Pakistan’s constitution did not allow the military to carry out commercial operations. would give Ventures
In a press conference on April 25, the director general of the army’s media wing, Inter-Services Public Relations, Major General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, was asked about the army’s attempt to acquire government land for corporate farming.
He replied that developing and developed countries have used their military in one way or another to improve their agricultural sector, but he added that what role did the military play in making the land more arable? The final decision can be taken by the provincial and federal government.
