LAHORE: Following promulgation of the ordinance for amending the Lahore Development Authority Act 1975 and limiting the authority’s jurisdiction to the metropolitan areas of the provincial capital alone, the government on Friday directed the authority to hand it over the entire land use and private housing schemes record related to the districts of Sheikhupura, Nankana Sahib and Kasur to the respective defunct tehsil municipal administrations/municipal committees/tehsil councils with immediate effect.

“The LDA has already started preparations to hand over the entire land use/private housing schemes/subdivisions record to the respective defunct local government field formations based in the districts of Sheikhupura, Nankana Sahib and Kasur. At present, the record/files is being gathered at one place after collecting from the respective directorates of metropolitan planning wing,” an official source in LDA told Dawn.

A letter written by the Local Government and Community Development Department to the LDA director general on Friday said: “The LDA (Amendment) ordinance 2021 (XVIII) has been promulgated on April 13 to amend the LDA act, 1975 (XXX of 1975). Accordingly, the jurisdiction of LDA has been confined to metropolitan area of Lahore as defined under section 9 (1) (b) of the Punjab Local Government Act-2019. Hence, the instructions earlier issued vide No. SOR (LG) 38-2/2004 of November 26, 2013 on the subject shall stand withdrawn to the extent of districts of Nankana Sahib, Sheikhupura and Kasur”. The letter was titled, ‘Curtailment of Jurisdiction of LDA with respect to land use and housing schemes viz-a-viz Nankana Sahib, Sheikhupura and Kasur’.

“You are requested to hand over all record pertaining to the land use and private housing schemes to the local governments concerned,” it says.

It may be mentioned that the LDA’s jurisdiction, in view of the rising complaints related to mushroom growth of illegal housing schemes, commercial buildings and inappropriate land use in Kasur, Nankana and Sheikhupura, had been expanded to these districts with an objective to regulate all such affairs instead of getting these done by the then TMAs. However, the problems related to various issues in these districts couldn’t be resolved due to various legal, technical and administrative problems.

Though the then PML-N government was satisfied with its decision, the PTI government, after coming into power in August 2018, started working to reverse most of the PML-N orders/policies, including the LDA (Amendment Act) 2013 under which the authority’s jurisdiction was expanded to other districts. Finally, Punjab Governor Chaudhry Sarwar on April 13 issued an ordinance to amend the LDA Act, 1975, deleting Sheikhupura, Kasur and Nankana Sahib from the LDA’s scope of work. The governor did this reportedly while acknowledging the demands of the provincial ministers, assembly members and the public at large.

Published in Dawn, April 24th, 2021