BAHAWALPUR, Aug 18: The committee for the distribution of the property of late Nawab Sadiq Muhammad Khan Abbasi has directed the federal land commission to release over 300,000-acre Shahi Shikargarh land , which was seized under martial law's regulations in 1959.

The royal Shikargah, measuring about 312,446 acres, belonged to the late Bahawalpur Nawab. Under the late Ayub Khan's land reforms act, this Shikargarh was taken over by federal government.

Later, Nawab Sadiq challenged the decision in the Supreme Court, which waived martial law regulation No 64 of 1959 and ordered release of the land. However, the federal land commission is still possessing it.

It is learnt that committee's chairman Justice Abdul Qadeer Chaudhry (retired), while making his recommendations to the government for giving away the landed property to the late Nawab's legal heirs, has moved the land commission for the release of the property.

According to sub-committee chairman Abdul Ghafoor Bhatti, the former justice has also recommended that after the release of this Shikargah land by the land commission, the Cholistan Development Authority should further distribute it among the Nawab's legal heirs and descendants.

Meanwhile, it is believed that several legal heirs, who had occupied a major portion of the land in Shikargah, have sold it to a number of people.

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