PESHAWAR: While stopping Chitral’s settlement officer from handing over land records to the revenue authorities, the Peshawar High Court has issued fresh directions to the federal and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governments to respond to a petition against an over four-decade-old notification, which declared the region’s all mountains, wastelands, jungles, pastures and riverbeds the property of the provincial government.

A bench consisting of Justice Lal Jan Khattak and Justice Sahibzada Asadullah fixed July 27 for the next hearing into the petition filed by over 100 Chitral residents, who claimed that they represented the entire population of Chitral.

It extended interim relief earlier granted to the petitioners by ordering the settlement officer of Upper and Lower Chitral not to hand over the land settlement records to the revenue officers, including senior member of the board of revenue, commissioner of Malakand division and deputy commissioners of Upper and Lower Chitral districts, until further orders.

PHC asks settlement officer not to give record to revenue officials

The court also allowed the petitioners to include the home secretary as respondent in the case.

The petitioners, including former MNA Shahzada Iftikharuddin, former MPA Ghulam Mohammad and others, have challenged some portions of a 1975 notification of the provincial government claiming that the notification declared all mountains, wastelands, forests, pastures and riverbedsin Chitral to be the property of the provincial government.

They requested the court to halt the land settlement process for what they called sequestrating their private or collective properties.

The petitioners said as land settlement in Upper and Lower Chitral districts was in full swing, the provincial government, relying on the ambiguous notification issued by the home and tribal affairs department in July 1975, was bent on declaring all mountains, wastelands, jungles, pastures and riverbeds of Chitral to be its properly.

Barrister Asadul Mulk and Muhibullah Tirchvi appeared for the petitioners and requested the court for extending interim relief earlier granted to their clients.

They said if that relief was not extended, the petition would become infructuous and would cause irreparable loss to their clients.

They contended that 97 per cent of the total land mass of Chitral region was registered in the name of the provincial government that was unfathomable and contrary to the command of Article 172(1) of the Constitution.

Barrister Mulk pointed out that the petition was filed in 2019 and comments had so far been filed by the respondents.

He said there were several statutory and constitutional defects in the 1975 notification.

The lawyer said the petition also questioned the 1975 notification’s reconcilability with Article 171 of the Constitution, which deals with ownerless properties, as was its reconcilability with the report of the Land Dispute Inquiry Commission formed in 1970s.

He said the impugned parts of the 1975 notification were too vague and ambiguous, to be the subject of legal enforcement, without judicious illumination.

The counsel added that the interpretation accorded by the settlement office to the impugned parts of the 1975 notification was draconian.

Published in Dawn, July 10th, 2021