ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court has emphasised the need to overhaul mechanisms of compensation paid for the land acquired for official business.

The court said granting a lesser value will be against the fundamental rights to life, dignity and the right to own property.

This was observed by a three-judge bench which rejected the appeals filed by the government and the Military Estate Officer against a Lahore High Court (LHC) order to increase compensation for the land acquired to expand the Pakistan Ordnance Factory in Wah.

The bench included Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial, Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and Justice Ayesha A. Malik.

The judgement, authored by Justice Malik called for legislation to calculate the potential compensation for the acquired land according to the best market value instead of leaving it to the whims of the land acquisition collector.

“The right to own property being a fundamental right is inclusive of the right to possession, right of control and the right to derive income from the property,” the judgement added.

“The exception to this fundamental right as per Article 24 is compulsory acquisition for public purpose, which means that the State can acquire private property for public purpose under the authority of law, which provides for compensation and either fixes the compensation or provides for a mechanism to fix compensation.”

The court observed that the government had made no efforts to devise a scheme to calculate the potential value of land over the years.

This should be a priority for the government as acquisition cannot be at the expense of the financial loss to landowners, Justice Malik observed.

She said there was no justification to continue with archaic concepts to assess a land’s value.

To evaluate the compensation, the land acquisition collector must consider several aspects, the judge added.

These included the location of the land and its physical attributes such as accessibility, attributes related to land use, which includes residential, commercial and industrial use; the availability of utilities such as water, gas, electricity, phone connectivity and the price of land in the vicinity. “[The] factors such as potential for economic growth, urbanisation, infrastructure development, adds value to the land.”

The case

In its verdict on June 18, 2019, the Rawalpindi Bench of the LHC ordered the military estate to increase the compensation to Rs30,000 per kanal along with a 15 per cent necessary acquisition charges and compound interest.

The issue was over the acquisition of land in three villages of the Attock district Attock — Burhan, Jallo and Islamgarh.

Published in Dawn, February 19th, 2023